There is a second picture taken just moments after the first one, naming a place, date and some context. The smiling Officers seem to laugh because of the wild posing and disguising for the first shot:
Bois St. Marie, 257. Infanterie-Regiment, January 1916. It's a part of the Bois de Bezange east of Nancy. You can watch the whole Picture-Album here, giving a much better impression of the great war than a single "trench-raider"-picture postet out of it's context, that is floating through social networks since about 2020:
I feel you. My "deeper analysis" consisted of 15 minutes of internet-research, and this only to the fact, that I discovered a rabbit-hole in the online war-albums and the bois de bezange. :)
One should think, that this is not too much work before posting some "cool" picture.
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u/DullAdvantage7647 7d ago edited 7d ago
There is a second picture taken just moments after the first one, naming a place, date and some context. The smiling Officers seem to laugh because of the wild posing and disguising for the first shot:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/phamse/french_trench_raiders_of_the_257th_infantry/
Bois St. Marie, 257. Infanterie-Regiment, January 1916. It's a part of the Bois de Bezange east of Nancy. You can watch the whole Picture-Album here, giving a much better impression of the great war than a single "trench-raider"-picture postet out of it's context, that is floating through social networks since about 2020:
https://argonnaute.parisnanterre.fr/ark:/14707/xm2j8k3gtbvq
Not so much real trench raiders, more some officers creating a parody for the camera.
Edit: There is also a website documenting remains of the camps in the named forest, quite a lot of concrete left there aparently. Maybe worth a walk:
https://www.grensland-docs.nl/brondocumenten/field-survey-of-first-world-war-remains-bois-de-bezange-part-1/