Description
Object description
Leather wallet, monogrammed, containing a good quality photograph album compiled by Second Lieutenant John H Lawrence of photographs taken whilst serving in 218 Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, during the last two years of the First World War in France. The album entitled "Reminiscences of 218 Siege Battery RGA, BEF, 1916-1918 and Glimpses Twenty Years After" was compiled with photographs taken during the war but printed in 1937-1938 and mounted alongside similar images taken in France during a visit in 1937 as a comparative study.
Studies include: Officers, NCOs and men (some named) of 218 Siege Battery and also Colonel Hanna, Officer Commanding 18th Brigade. Various activities and equipment are depicted including British Artillery and armoured fighting vehicles (60pdr and 6 inch guns being operated, including some camouflaged); Whippet Tank going into action on the Somme; German artillery (77mm German Field Gun; captured 5.9 inch gun, destroyed trench mortar); prisoners; activities of the battery and its personnel.
Scenes depicting the front line, such as trench scenes, barbed wire entanglements and views including dugouts at various locations and time periods (Somme, Arras etc) German lines, German and British machine gun posts and dugouts with gas curtains and alarm gong. 18th Brigade HQ at St Martin. artillery movements and resting in the citadel of Arras. Interior and exterior of the Bellicort tunnels.
Various notable locations include Ribeauville, Thiepval, Albert, Bellicourt, Vis en Artois; St Martin, Arras, Somme, Ponchaux, La Basse, Ancre, St Elois, Ronsoy, Mazenheim, Beuvry, St Souplet, Cambrai, Boni (on the Hindenburg Line), Le Cateau.
An aerial photograph of the battery's position at Damme Strasse, Ypres, as of April 1918, is featured and is laid alongside a hand-drawn illustration mapping all the notable features on the photograph.
Included outside this album are a set of commercial postcards depicting the scenery of the Rhine environs in Germany, a folding postcard set depicting the ruins of Ypres and some amateur photographs taken by Lawrence during his time in Germany during his visit of 1937. Also a postcard of one of the siege guns and gun crew and another entitled 3/1 Welsh RFA.
Physical description
Blue, leather wallet monogrammed with E.A.P containing leather photograph album enscribed 218 S.B. R.G.A. 1916-1918 and also monogrammed with E.A.P. Three paper enveloped/wallets containing additional prints. All album prints have green typewritten captions. Only some of the loose prints have captions on the reverse.