The Miracles Of Technology

Photography was a new concept when it came to warfare.
Although images had been taken of fighting men as far back as the Crimean War of the 1850s, there was never an instant appearance in the press like that of today.
It was not until the Great War, that the technology had advanced so far that a photograph taken in the morning, could be developed in the afternoon and be back in London the following day. From here it could be transferred into a printing block and be in print in a national newspaper that afternoon. 
The first real time that The Suffolk Regiment experienced this new media war was in January 1915, when a photographer from the Daily Mail captured men of the 1st Battalion huddling around their braziers in the railways sidings at Rouen. By the following day, it had appeared in the press in England, less that 48 hours after it was taken. 
"The Great European War" as the picture was entitled, showed 2/Lieutenant E.D.C. Hunt, Captain P.S. Walker, Captain P.C. Harris and Corporal H. Theaker, warming their hands in the intense cold; shown by the fact that the men are wearing their newly issued goatskin jackets over their greatcoats.

---