2-710-742 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Blowing Up A Bridge Across the Aisne at Soissons', (1919). Scene from the First World War, 1914-1919: British soldiers destroy a bridge over the River Aisne in northern France. 'Royal Engineers endeavouring to stop the German advance...one by one were killed by the German sharpshooters before they were able to light the fuse. One after another dashed forward to light the fuse; and as one man fell, another rushed to take up the task until the death-toll numbered eleven...the twelfth man, racing across the deadly zone where his comrades lay, lit the fuse - but the hero fell dead beside his gallant comrades.' From "The History of the Great European War: its causes and effects", Vol. II, by W. Stanley Macbean Knight. [Caxton Pulishing Company, Limited, London, 1919]