JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This is a photo of a tiny piece of the army behind the army–in this case women preparing clothing for the British Expeditionary Force in 1918. The trousers that they are handling in this image represent–in an offhand calculation–about one one hundred thousandth of one percent of the trousers that just the BEF would have worn. .00001, or some such number. When the photograph was made in late 1918, the U.K. had about four million men in uniform, which was not the total of all those who served; in the end, nearly 2.6 million U.K. soldiers were killed or wounded from 1914-1918. It took millions of people in a vast coordinated effort to support a n army of this size, and so far away.
Source: part of the 500+ image collection of news photo service photographs, many of which would have the paper description attached to the image for inclusion as a caption to the image when it was published in a magazine or newspaper.
