45 Most Powerful Images Of World War I

When we think of the First World War, we think of the horrific images of a bloodbath fought in the trenches of the Western Front. It’s the first war to happen on a global scale, fought in every ocean and almost every continent.

In honor of all the fallen soldiers who've fought for his country, here are 45 of the most arresting photos from World War I:

1. A soldier pays respect at a colleague's grave near Cape Helles, where the Gallipoli landings took place, 1915

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

2. British soldiers posing in front a newly captured German trench, pointing to a sign that says “Old Hun Line.”

National Library of Scotland

3. A combat engineer listens to German movement near Verdun, 1915

REX USA

4. Indian soldiers digging trenches, 1915

Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood / Crown Copyright

5. Two soldiers inspect an umbrella.

National Library of Scotland

6. Tensions lifted after a rare temporary truce and enjoyed a football kick-around, 1915

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

7. German troops play football behind the lines, 1915

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

8. Portraits of German prisoners

National Library of Scotland

9. Soldiers peer through a shell hole

National Library of Scotland

10. A cavalry officer smokes a pipe as his horse trots its way down the steep slope of a mine crater

National Library of Scotland

11. Two soldiers enjoying a jar of rum

National Library of Scotland

12. British soldiers in a dugout

National Library of Scotland

13. At a signal station for the Dehra Dun Brigade, the soldiers in the middle are on telephones, taking down messages, 1915.

The British Library

14. Off-duty relaxation

National Library of Scotland

15. A captured German aeroplane

National Library of Scotland

16. Soldiers and locals sitting outside a German building with the door smeared with “Gott strafe England," which means “God punish England.”

National Library of Scotland

17. French troops throw rocks at advancing German troops from their hillside trench in the Vosges, 1916

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

18. A Japanese soldier tries to rouse a fallen comrade

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

19. A derelict train with soldiers inside it, France

National Library of Scotland

20. Soldiers in a trench wearing paper hats from Christmas crackers while a sentry uses a mirror to keep watch on no-man’s land, France, 1916

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

21. Messenger dogs with their handler, France.

National Library of Scotland

22. Soldiers standing in mud, France.

National Library of Scotland

23. Taking a nap, Thievpal, France

National Library of Scotland

24. British soldiers walk on a shell-cratered winter landscape along the Somme, 1916

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

25. A British soldier transporting shells using a wheelbarrow, Messines, Belgium, 1917

National Library of Scotland

26. Locals and soldiers of the Royal Army Medical Corps give refreshments to the wounded, 1916

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

27. A British soldier looks out of a dugout with the body of a dead German soldier laying nearby, 1916

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

28. Brigadier-General J.V. Campbell (on bridge) congratulate soldiers of the 46th Division after they successfully crossed the St Quentin Canal

PA Photos/PA Archive/Press Association Images

29. The 1st battalion of the 4th Ghurkha Rifles in a line for inspection

Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood / Crown Copyright

30. Soldiers coming out of a trench with their bayonets, ready for attack

Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood / Crown Copyright

31. Soldiers attend a church service in a field

National Library of Scotland

32. An officer in his hut dug into the side of a trench

Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood / Crown Copyright

33. A sergeant reading a sign that says: “Kindness to animals. 500 horses lamed weekly by nails dropped on roads and horse lines by cookers carrying firewood with nails left in. Please remove nails.”

National Library of Scotland

34. The 9th British Lancers charging German artillery, France, 1916

REX USA/Underwood Archives / UIG / Rex

35. Bombarding of Saint-Bertin church, 1916

REX USA

36. German troops with gas masks throw hand grenades, April 23, 1916

REX USA

37. Manufactured poison gas was used on a large scale for the very first time during World War.

Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood / Crown Copyright

French troops wearing gas masks at the Second Battle of Ypres, 1916

Universal History Archive

38. American soldier suffocating on the western front.

REX USA/Mondadori Collection / UIG / Rex

39. A soldier demonstrate an ungainly French gas mask. As historian Gerald Fitgerald wrote, "French masks were notoriously unreliable."

Mondador Portfolio / Getty Images

40. A French strongman soldier lifting a cannon overhead with three of his comrades on it, 1917

REX USA/Underwood Archives / UIG / Rex

41. 55th Division of the British Army blinded by a poison gas attack, April 1918

Universal History Archive

42. The bodies of hundreds of Italian soldiers strewn across the battlefield. They were died of gas and flame attacks.

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

43. Both German horses and soldiers wear gas masks as during the Second Battle of the Aisne at Soissons, France, June 1918

Mondador Portfolio / Getty Images

44. French soldiers attacking German trenches with gas and flame, Flanders, Belgium, 1918

DOD / Signal Office /Getty Images

45. German prisoners of war gathered at a clearing station after the successful Allied Forces offensive near Amiens, France. General Ludendorff described it as “The Black Day of the German Army,” 1918.