Remember me: the lost Diggers of Vignacourt

It was a rainy weekend in Brisbane, but I ventured to the Queensland Museum, forgetting that it was school holidays!

I wanted to visit the new travelling exhibit, on loan, from the Australian War Memorial.  It comprises 74 black and white enlarged prints.  Fortunately such sombre images didn't attract the interest of the hordes of screaming children and their harried parents!

The prints were made from glass negatives and are a part of a collection comprising of, in excess of 800 glass plate negatives, which once belonged to Louis and Antoinette Thuillier, who operated a photographic studio in the French village of Vignacourt during World War 1.  

The village was positioned behind the front lines of the Somme.  It held a casualty station and provided a recreation area for soldiers serving in the British Commonwealth forces, so the photographs are a combination of formal poses and more relaxed candid shoots, capturing the larrikin character of the Australian Digger.  

Despite the name of the exhibit there are several photos, depicting Indian and Chinese members of the British Labour Corps, a group of diminutive Gurkha soldiers and French civilians and soldiers.

The enlarged photographs depicted the various uniforms and markings worn by Australian soldiers, denoting rank, years of service and even the number of wounds sustained during the conflict.  Some unit insignia are evident as well.  Of interest, there is an example of an Australian soldier wearing a goat skill over jacket, due to the extreme cold experienced during Winter.

The glass negatives, together with a canvas background, depicted in the photograph below were recovered from the attic of a French farmhouse in 2011.

In addition to the photographs, there were a number of physical exhibits which struck me as demonstrating just how small, in statute, the soldiers of WW1 were when compared to present day Australians.  

Above is an example of the clarity of photographs included in the exhibition.  It depicts Lieutenant Sydney Carroll, MC of the 4th Machine Gun Battalion, on the right of frame in the side car and the cigarette smoking rider is an unidentified Lieutenant, who is also a Military Cross recipient and is believed to have served as a staff officer with the headquarters of 4th Brigade. 

The collection will be touring twenty two cities and towns within Australia over the next four years.  I highly recommend it.