THE TRUE COLOURS OF WAR

Incredible images that bring WW1 to life

COLOURISING historical photos is not an exact science. It is a delicate and technical process that requires, on the one hand, diligent historical research and, on the other, the use of what can be called – without apology – artistic licence.

It does not “restore” anything to a black-and-white photograph, for such an image has no hidden colours to hunt for. Instead, it adds them, based on known facts and responsible guesswork. It is an interpretive tool, but it is self-evident that we respond to colour instinctively, and in deep, primal ways. It stirs our hearts as well as our heads.

Colourisation at its best is an emotional enhancing agent: it magnifies empathy and horror, pity and disgust. It challenges us to respond to history not simply as accountants and analysts, but as human beings, capable of the same fear, confusion, passion, ambition, anger and love as those whose images we see. Assembling 200 photographs that do justice to the history of the First and Second World Wars as we have for our new book, The World Aflame, was a hard and sometimes harrowing process.

Miles upon miles of books have been written on the topics we mention; in many cases, a single photograph and caption here has an entire scholarship devoted to its study. In the two years we spent working, we passed the centenary of the end of the First World War, and the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War.

We heard all too often of the deaths of veterans of the latter conflict, now a sadly dwindling group.

Some time in the next decade or so, the last of the wartime generation will be lost to the world, and their deeds and experiences will become solely the preserve of history, and not living memory.

Our book is a journey through those deadly but fascinating wartime years. It is not an attempt to impose (or reimpose) a grand new historical shape on the events it describes. Rather, it asks you to look at a story that has been told many times over in a brand-new light.

●Extracted from The World Aflame: The Long War, 1914-1945 by Dan Jones and Marina Amaral (Head of Zeus, £25), published today. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.co.uk. Delivery may take in excess of 28 days

THE SHELL CRISIS On May 9, 1915, a British attack known as the Battle of Aubers Ridge ended in failure with 23,000 casualties. British commander Sir John French complained about a lack of artillery shells. The ensuing scandal had a profound impact on society as ‘munitionettes’ flowed into new factories. Women were paid less, worked long hours and faced toxic substances and explosions. But their jobs provided income, welfare, food and a sense of community

PASSCHENDAELE In mid-July 1917, British guns fired four million shells at German lines in preparation for an infantry attack on Passchendaele ridge near the Belgian city of Ypres. But all this did was plough the clay soil of these Flanders fields and, when torrential rain began in August, the ground became a thick, cold, sapping quagmire that sucked in men, horses and guns

THE AIR WAR The Prussian aristocrat Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron (centre), was one of the most famous warriors of the First World War. Handsome and deadly, he was all the more alluring because his weapon had been created by the war itself: the fighter plane

HARLEM HELLFIGHTER Corporal Fred McIntyre served with the 369th Infantry of the US Army – a highly decorated African-American regiment known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters But there was nothing diabolical about the appearance of the US troops. Indeed, their arrival in 1917 was viewed as a moment of deliverances.

ROMANIA’S CONQUEROR Field Marshal August von Mackensen was 64 at the outbreak of war and had earned the right to wear the Prussian Hussars regiments’ black Totenkopf (death’s head) uniform, complete with fur busby. In December 1916, Mackensen captured Bucharest

PRISONERS OF WAR The First World War also produced around 10 million captives and POW camps were a regular sight behind the lines. This German photograph shows captured Allied soldiers of eight nationalities: Vietnamese, Tunisian, Senegalese, Sudanese, Russian, US, Portuguese and English

GUNS OF THE SOMME The Battle of the Somme, which began July 1, 1918, was preceded by an artillery barrage that lasted seven days and rained 1.7 million shells on German lines. Yet despite this, British troops were mown down by machine-guns untouched by the shelling