First World War

This gallery provides a series of snapshots illustrating the way in which the First World War unfolded at home and abroad, and on land, in the air and over water. In this picture two airman, followed by a boy with a bike, make their way to a German zeppelin airship that had crash-landed in an Essex field in September 1916.

British soldiers line up in a narrow trench in October 1914 during World War I.

A bridge over France's River Aisne is blown up.

A female munitions worker operates a machine in an armaments factory.

Hundreds of British soldiers sit on the banks of the captured St Quentin Canal in France in 1918.

A pilot poses in a Sopwith Camel, one of the First World War's best-known British fighter planes.

A wounded soldier is carried through knee-high mud near Boesinghe during the battle of Passchendaele in Flanders.

Private Robert Ryden is lifted onto the shoulders of friends after receiving the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace in 1916. After his officers were wounded and his company was held up by heavy rifle fire at Thiepval, France, the 20-year-old soldier ran to the enemy trench and cleared it on his own.