Category Archives: France

Kodak and Aerial Photography

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Alexine by Lt. Hoyt_WWI001v2While Marion was busy journaling their experiences during WWI, Alexine, Marion’s sister, was taking photographs as they traveled about doing their work. Alexine first mentions ‘investing’ in a Kodak in a letter home from Paris (April, 1917) and actually writes about taking pictures in a letter dated May, 1917. In the photo at left she is holding the Kodak that she used. While we don’t have her original camera, we have many photographs that she took, most with outstanding clarity and detail. So many of the pictures are the exact size of the film, making us think that the developers made ‘contact’ sheets of the negatives.

Kodak introduced film as we know it today in 1885, with the folding pocket Kodak camera coming to the public in 1898. We know the family had one at the turn of the century because of all the camping pictures  of Yosemite in 1901-1906. This ad is from a National Geographic magazine dated April, 1917 when Kodak started producing this particular model. We think it is very similar to the one that Alexine used, perhaps even the same one.camera ad 01

Also, in 1917, Kodak developed aerial cameras and trained aerial photographers for the US Signal Corps to help in France during the war. Some recommended books to read about this time period in photography’s history are: The Last Summer of the World by Emily Mitchell (no relation), a novel about Edward Steichen; emilymitchellwriter.com/the-last-summer-of-the-world/ and Terry Finnegan’s book Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War; http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/shooting-the-front-hb.html.

Alexa and I both had fathers that enjoyed photography as a hobby, each of them using high-end camera equipment with fantastic results. My father went so far as to take me up in his airplane and teach me how to do aerial photography. You never know when that special skill may come in handy! He also constructed a darkroom in the house I lived in as a teenager and I learned the fine craftsmanship of every phase of photography while in high school and later after college I worked in a camera store for three years. It’s no wonder we feel a special affinity to the photographs and equipment that was used by the Mitchell sisters.

Bears of WWI and Winnie-the-Pooh

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Margaret and Bear

For over a year now Alexa and I have been sorting and ‘cataloguing’ the photographs, slides, glass negatives and lantern slides in this collection (we have 100’s) and one of the pictures that intrigued us was this one. The caption is ‘Margaret and Baloo, the bear.’  Margaret was a friend of Marion and Alexine’s  who went to France with them and served as a first aid worker with the Red Cross. I thought perhaps bear cubs during WWI were plentiful as there were many forests in France and perhaps the cub’s mothers were being killed. My research, however, did not support my theory.

However, I did come across something very interesting (at least to me; I have a great affection for children’s literature). In August, 1914, a train carrying Canadian troops was making it’s way from Manitoba to Ontario. Stopping at one of the stations, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn photo-2paid $20 to a hunter for a female bear cub that the Lieutenant named Winnie (for his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba). When Colebourn was being sent over to France to fight in December 1914, he left the bear at the London Zoo for safe-keeping. A.A. Milne took his young son, Christopher Robin, to the zoo and the bear and Christopher became good friends. There is a picture of the young boy actually in the enclosure feeding the bear. In 1924, A.A. Milne decided to put his son’s childhood ‘friends’ and stuffed animals into print with his first book and the Bear of Very Little Brain was introduced. His son had named the bear Winnie-the-Pooh after his friend at the zoo and a swan that he knew named Pooh. The real bear, Winnie, stayed at the London Zoo until she died in 1934. Lieutenant Colebourn did come back for her, but when he saw how popular she was with everyone, he decided to leave her there. We only have this one picture of Baloo, the bear, and the bear is not mentioned in Marion’s journal, so who knows the story behind this. What we do know is that Marion admired Rudyard Kipling so she was probably the one to name the bear and take the picture.  Posted by Vicki Rondeau

In Flanders Fields

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Did you know?  100 years ago today (December 8, 1915) this poem was published in an English publication called Punch, anonymously.  The poem was so well received in Europe as well as the US, the poet was revealed and the poem became one of the most popular poems ever written.  The author, John McCrae, was an army field doctor, who wrote the poem during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 while tending to the wounded and burying the dead.  It captures the anguish of the tragic consequences of war.  He died in 1918 of pneumonia and meningitis.  He was 46.

In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the Dead. Shorts days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and Now we lie
In Flanders’ fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders’ Fields.

in-flanders-fields-the-poppies-blow

Happy Veteran’s Day

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11-11-18-WWI-039“Paris was alive! The entire city seemed to be fluttering with millions of flags.  Every vehicle of every sort was bedecked with the Allied colors.  As far down side streets as one could see was a billowing sea of flags flung to the breeze from every housetop, pole, and window.  Bunting was festooned from every lamppost.  Everyone had red, white and blue ribbons or flowers.  In front of the Gare de Lyon two French officers bumped into each other.  They turned to apologize, there was a shout of recognition and they fell into each other’s arms and embraced on either cheek, French fashion, no less than six times! ”

(Chapter 31, November 11, 1918, Marion Mitchell)