Tony Barton
Company Commander
LIBERATORS ON FILM : NIJMEGEN PHOTO ARCHIVE .
My friend Woffenden has this week reminded me of this wonderful online archive.
If you want to know what Tommy really looked like in the 21st Army Group in the Nederlands in the winter of 44/45, this is where you go.
Liberators on film - a set on Flickr
There are a few GIs as well, some from the Airborne, as you might expect at Nijmegen.
I can’t comment on the GIs ( go to about page five where they start ) but the Tommies are very interesting.
Inevitably , since the photographer was working behind the frontline, many of the are from “ support arms “, Royal Artillery, R.A.M.C., R.E.M.E. and so on , rather than frontline Infantry .
But not all of them by any means: there are some Infantry from the Durhams, the Guards , and at least one Hampshire. Rarities include the Leicester Yeomanry , converted to artillery at that date .
The first thing that really strikes you is how old they look : men do seem to have aged rather faster then than they do now. Since they were all conscripts, which took men into their forties , perhaps it’s not so surprising , but most frontline veterans remark on how young they were at the time. A point to ponder.
They are not beautiful : the British are not a good-looking people on the whole , and there are some splendidly homely types here, as well as some candidates for the famous apocryphal “ Book of British Teeth “ .
There is a feast of badges and divisional flashes. Surprisingly, some have no shoulder titles, but some formations never wore them .
The hats are various : the Cap,G.S. is much in evidence, but there are RAC black berets and the odd coloured sidecap ( worn only for leave ).Officers are chiefly distinguished by their ties, but there are a few ORs wearing them too , since they were permitted for the first time at that period .
I have used these photos as inspiration for making heads for some time .
My friend Woffenden has this week reminded me of this wonderful online archive.
If you want to know what Tommy really looked like in the 21st Army Group in the Nederlands in the winter of 44/45, this is where you go.
Liberators on film - a set on Flickr
There are a few GIs as well, some from the Airborne, as you might expect at Nijmegen.
I can’t comment on the GIs ( go to about page five where they start ) but the Tommies are very interesting.
Inevitably , since the photographer was working behind the frontline, many of the are from “ support arms “, Royal Artillery, R.A.M.C., R.E.M.E. and so on , rather than frontline Infantry .
But not all of them by any means: there are some Infantry from the Durhams, the Guards , and at least one Hampshire. Rarities include the Leicester Yeomanry , converted to artillery at that date .
The first thing that really strikes you is how old they look : men do seem to have aged rather faster then than they do now. Since they were all conscripts, which took men into their forties , perhaps it’s not so surprising , but most frontline veterans remark on how young they were at the time. A point to ponder.
They are not beautiful : the British are not a good-looking people on the whole , and there are some splendidly homely types here, as well as some candidates for the famous apocryphal “ Book of British Teeth “ .
There is a feast of badges and divisional flashes. Surprisingly, some have no shoulder titles, but some formations never wore them .
The hats are various : the Cap,G.S. is much in evidence, but there are RAC black berets and the odd coloured sidecap ( worn only for leave ).Officers are chiefly distinguished by their ties, but there are a few ORs wearing them too , since they were permitted for the first time at that period .
I have used these photos as inspiration for making heads for some time .
