Military History Photo Friday: WWI Indian troops cooking on the Western Front

 

This is an interesting image of World War One you don't generally see--some Indian cavalry troopers cooking a meal. It was taken in Estrée Blanche, France, on 25 July 1915 and is part of a massive collection of images the British Library has uploaded onto flickr. The collection, numbering more than a million public domain images that are totally free to reuse, spans every subject imaginable from old maps to children's books. It's an amazing resource for researchers, indie authors, and pretty much everyone else.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about Indian troops in World War One, the British colony contributed some 1.5 million men to the war effort. One wonders if the guys in this shot brought along some curry powder from home or if they were stuck eating the bland fare everyone else had to deal with!

You can get a large-format copy of this image here.