During World War I battlefields that began as forests ended as plains.  And since telephonic communications depended upon wires, and since the wires needed to go somewhere, anything that survived that was head-and-shoulders above the ground was of particular use, especially to the telephone corps and especially for the use of telephone wires.  This news service photo (provided by the Western Newspaper Union) shows a rather desolate scene, with Canadian engineers working the wreck of a lone tree for all it was worth…as is plainly visible, there is nothing else like it in the near or remote vicinity.  

It was the practice of the agencies providing these images for worldwide distribution to also include typed captions for the photographs.  

The original of this photograph is available at the blog’s bookstore, here.