Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0119Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of a desolate landscape, a small pond is in the foreground skeletal remains of trees of visible in the background, several bodies can be seen in the image. Above the image "W41 (Star)" is printed, below the image "V18840 No Man's Land near Lens, France." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company Copyrighted, Underwood & Underwood, Inc. Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Chicago, Ill., London, England." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
V18840
NO MAN'S LAND NEAR LENS, FRANCE
Look as caefully as you can over this field of desolation and carnage and you will find hardly an inch of ground that has not been blasted over and over againg by explosive shells. Those stumps, the remains of a beautiful orchard, show what kind of ground this No Man's Land was before the Allies and their foe came to grips here in the tremendous battle that raged for the channel ports in Northern France and Belgium.
Shell holes without number as far as the eye can reach, filled with stagnant gas-filled water, as deadly as the wells that the Germans poisoned as they retreated. At the edge of the hole nearst to you is discernible a rifle and bayonet: at your feet is a helmet still covering the head of its owener.
Farther on towards the largest tree stump you can see the body of one of the dead. Hundred like this soldier have lain between the lines of the armies, for days, weeks, months, when the fighting, fiercer than ever before, raged all abut them. On the extreme right there are the remains of another of the men who strove in the dusk of some grey morning to make his way to the enemy's lines.
If you had gone the length of the line held by the British in France you would ahbe seen miles and miles of terrible desolation like this, "where all is still and cold and dead."
Copyright by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection