Friday, December 7, 2018

Some Gave All: Musee de la Grande Guerre, Meaux France

Some Gave All: Musee de la Grande Guerre, Meaux France:

Musee de la Grande Guerre, Meaux France

These are scenes from Meaux's Musee de la Grande Guerre, a museum dedicated to the topic of World War One.  The displays here are really impressive.

All photos are MKTH photographs.


This museum  has a fine display of weapons, including artillery.











An example of French uniforms early in the war.  Note the red trousers and the dark blue jacket.

An example of the type of uniforms the Germans wore prior to World War One. The coat is a "Prussian Blue" service coat with red flashing.  The helmet is the classic German "Pickelhaube" that survived into the early years of the war.

A panting commemorating the alliance between republican France and Imperial Russia.

Imperial Russian flag in Russian and French, for those units that served on the Western Front.


Example of early semi automatic pistols.

Display of British uniform.

British uniforms.

German uniforms.


French helmet, top, outfitted with net.  German M16 helmet below, with painted camouflage.

Ship camouflage.


French armor, and primitive trench club.


German armor.

Early helmets.


Trench hand to hand weapons, including entrenching tools.


Light machine guns, Lewis top, Chauchat bottom.

Small arms of the Great War.

French cavalryman's armor. Early in the war, things remained very 19th Century for awhile.

Horizontal stabilizer of a French airplane.

Signalling flag.





Early airborne ordinance.































French winter uniform.



French uniforms.



Russian uniform.

British uniform.

French uniform on left, German on right.

German helmet pierced by a projectile.

French helmet likewise pierced.


Travelling Communion set.


















British desert uniform.


German uniform for African troops in Africa.











Gurkha kukri.






U.S. handguns.


Display of American weapons.















Trench mortar.





















A casual observation

Putting clothes in the washing machine is not "doing the laundry".

Moreover, washing them and then never taking them out to dry isn't either.

December 7, 1918. Doughboy Santa on the Saturday Evening Post, British Day in the US, POWs on their way home through Switzerland,


Christmas was coming. . . something that was always featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post with family oriented or whimsical illustrations.  This year, however, the covers still reflected a martial aire, as in this illustration of Santa Clause by Leydecker in which Santa sports a M1917 helmet, Army breeches (wrong color again. . .but I think I've determined that was due to the Saturday Evening Post, not Leydecker, and a Sam Brown Belt.

Christmas wasn't the only holiday that 1918.  British Day, an event called to honor the UK's role, or perhaps the entire British Empire's role, in the Great War was also observed in the United States.



British Day Celebration,  Columbia South Carolina. December 7, 1918.



Elsewhere, it was get out of POW camp day.

Crowd at Basle, Switzerland, waiting to view released American POWs.

Released American POWs.