GERMAN OFFENSIVE 10 [Main Title]

British troops on the La Bassée Canal and the Mont des Cats area, and the funeral of Manfred von Richthofen ('the Red Baron') at Bertangles, all Western Front, mid-April 1918.

I. The La Bassée Canal sector. British troops commencing barbed wire defences in open country on 17 April. On the same day troops in Béthune (?) dig a trench-line, with shells bursting over the houses. Two stretcher-bearers carry a wounded man out of the garden of a house and put him in an ambulance (they are probably 51st Division). Soldiers of the Portuguese 2nd Division wheel their bicycles through Béthune on 20 April while men of 51st Division line the route. II. Two small groups of British soldiers rest in foxholes in the Mont des Cats area, maybe 2nd Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of 33rd Division. Shells fall on Mont de Cats (?) filmed out-of-focus from the far side of barbed wire entanglements on 22 April. III. The funeral of Baron Manfred von Richthofen at Bertangles on 22 April. Two groundcrew of the RAF display the wreckage of his Fokker triplane and its two Spandau machine guns. Members of six RAF squadrons carry wreaths along the road to the cemetery. The burial party consists of men of 3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps. The party takes the coffin and places it covered with flowers on a lorry. The cortège moves off at a slow march. At the burial place itself a chaplain in vestments conducts the service while the burial party stands with reversed arms. The party then fires three volleys over the grave.

35mm