2-710-734 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The German "Flammenwerfer".', (1919). Scene from the First World War, 1914-1919: 'French soldiers are here shown testing the flame-projectors captured by them from the Germans. This product of German "Kultur" is to all intents and purposes identical with a portable fire-extinguisher, both in principle and construction, and in order to realise to the full the Hunlike brutality of its use it is necessary to remember that the great billowy clouds emitted from the apparatus are burning flames.' The first use of a flamethrower in a concerted action was on 30 July 1915 against British trenches at Hooge near Ypres in Belgium. From "The History of the Great European War: its causes and effects", Vol. V, by W. Stanley Macbean Knight. [Caxton Pulishing Company, Limited, London, 1919]