Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

Infantry Lieutenant, awarded the medal "For Courage". Voronezh front. 1943


Photo by D.A. Minsker

Sgt. Marvin E. McManus of Montgomery City, Missouri, ball turret gunner on the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress "Hard To Get" is passed out of the waist window of his plane to the waiting ambulance at an air base in England, after returning from an 8th Air Force attack on the ship building yards and naval arsenal at Kiel, Germany.


Sgt. McManus was wounded when a German fighter sent 20 mm cannon shell into his turret.
He kept shooting until he saw the fighter go down in flames, then climbed out of his turret, made his way to the radio room and collapsed.

Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3 of the Swiss Air Force in Thun, 1940.

A group of Imperial Russian mounted scouts, 1914-1917





Photo by Fyodorov E.P.
Color by Olga Shirnina ('Klimbim')

October 5, 1944 in the vicinity of Arracourt, northeastern France:
S/Sgt. Roy G. Grubbs (S/Nº 33060640) from Virginia, an M4 Sherman tank commander with ten enemy tanks to his credit. He served with Company 'C', 37th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division and received a battlefield commission.


Excerpt from 37th Tank Battalion 4th Armored Division After Action Reports, October 14, 1944:
In a solemn ceremony, with the sun gracing the field with unaccustomed brightness, Colonel Abrams pinned the bars upon five (5) enlisted men of the Battalion. The new second lieutenants, who were sworn in by Lt. White and received their commissions before the assembled officers and the first three graders, were: S/Sgt’s Charley Walters, “A” Company, James N. Farese, “B” Company, ROY G. GRUBBS, “C” COMPANY, Edward P Mallon, “D” Company, and Technical Sergeant Roy W. Smith of the Medical Detachment who filled the T/O vacancy of an MAC officer in the detachment. Immediately following this, decorations were awarded as follows: Silver Stars to Captain Voltz, Staff Sergeant Vannett, Private Liscavage, and Private First Class Malinski, Bronze Stars to Technical Sergeant Shelvin, Technician Fifth Grade Lorentzen, Corporal Dickerman, Technician Fifth Grade Green, and Private Ayotte. Seven (7) Purple Hearts were awarded.
Roy G. Grubbs (1919-1998) last residence: White Plains, MD
Coloured by Johnny Sirlande

Battle traffic at Grévillers. 25 August 1918.


Mark V Tanks and infantry going forward following the Capture of Grévillers by the New Zealand Division.
Grévillers, is a village in the Department of the Pas de Calais, 3 kilometres west of Bapaume.
Grévillers was occupied by Commonwealth troops on 14 March 1917 and in April and May, the 3rd, 29th and 3rd Australian Casualty Clearing Stations were posted nearby. They began the cemetery and continued to use it until March 1918, when Grévillers was lost to the German during their great advance.
On the following 24 August, the New Zealand Division recaptured Grévillers and in September, the 34th, 49th and 56th Casualty Clearing Stations came to the village and used the cemetery again.
Photographer - Aitken T K (2nd Lt)
© Image IWM (Q 11262)
Colour by Royston Leonard

Remembering Polish WWII hero W/Cdr Antoni ’Toni’ Głowacki DFC, DFM, No. 501 Squadron RAF.


On August 24, 1940, he shot down five German planes, becoming the first and one of only three pilots to achieve the ‘ace-in-a-day‘ status during the Battle of Britain flying his Hurricane Mk. I SD-A nr VZ124, ‘Lucky A’.
Antoni passed away in 1980, aged 70.

Ottoman officials hand over the city of Jerusalem to the British in 1917

red army truckman czechoslovakia 1945

Medics of the 101st Airborne Division and two Dutch local resistance fighters during purges in Veghel, immediately after the liberation.
Operation Market Garden, September 1944, Veghel, The Netherlands



Colourised PIECE of JAKE
Poto: Johan van Eerd
Source: NIMH

French soldiers saluting one of their lost brothers, fallen during The Battle of Cote 304 - Verdun, France.
25 August 1917

Boulton Paul Defiant Mk Is (including L7026 PS-V and N1535 PS-A) of No. 264 Squadron RAF based at Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, late July 1940.

Squadron Leader Philip Algernon Hunter DSO in Defiant N1535 PS-A, was leading this patrol at the time.
Hunter continued to lead 264 Squadron during the Battle of Britain but by now the Germans had discovered the weakness of the Defiant and the aircraft sustained heavy losses including Hunter, who was lost in action on 24 August 1940, in Defiant N1535.
The Defiant was withdrawn from day fighter operations one month later.
Nº264 was credited with about 150 victories during the war with close to 105 on the Defiant and 90 of those were on daytime missions.
IWM (CH 884), photographer B. J. Daventry
Coloured by Doug

27 August 1918
The German medical officer, Lt Schnelling of the 14th Bavarian Regiment, who was detailed to attend to the German wounded and who came to a 3rd New Zealand Field Ambulance station near the front line. Schnelling, left, is pictured with Colonel James Hardie Neil (NZMC)and Major H. M. Goldstein, M.C.


Photograph taken near Bapaume, France.
"...... the dressing station was pushed up to Achiet-le-Petit, and 500 casualties were passed through. Here three German medical officers presented themselves. One was the A.D.M.S. of a Naval Division; another, one of his staff; the third, Lt. Schnelling, of the 14th Bavarian Regiment. It transpired that this last was the medical officer who had been in charge of that cellar in Flers in which such ample personal correspondence, supplies, surgical instruments and medical comforts were found, these coming into Major Goldstein's possession at that time......" (24th August 1918)
(Achiet-le-Petit is about 6kms from Bapaume)
Colourised by Benjamin Thomas

El-Adem Sector, Tobruk, Lybia, August 27, 1941.


Men of 'D' Company, 2/17th Infantry Battalion, 9th Australian Division use a captured Italian field-gun to send 75mm shells back to their former owners. They were known as the “Bush Artillery” because they were converted infantrymen using captured guns. These men came to symbolize the desperate courage, and the resolve of Tobruk’s defenders during the siege of 41.
I believe I was able to identify some of the men in this photo as follows (left to right):
1st soldier unknown, 2nd soldier is NX60436 Pvt. H.E. Zouch, 3rd soldier unknown, 4th soldier is NX65985 Pvt. C.E. Lemaire (later recipient of the Military Medal for bravery in the field for action against the Japanese at Borneo in 1945), 5th soldier is NX17811 Pvt. L.J. McCarthy.
When the set to which this photo belongs to was shot by Warrant Officer (later Lt.) Thomas Fisher, official photographer of the 9th Division Military History and Information Section, the gun in question was about 4000 yards from the Axis front line.
As for the photographer, sadly W.O. Fisher (later Lt. Fisher) was the only photographer of the Military History and Information Section to be killed in action during WW2. He was killed in action against the Japanese at Papua on 16th November 1942. He has no known grave.
The gun is an Italian 75mm Cannone da 75/27 Modello 06 (Italian version of the German Kanone M1906), one of the oldest artillery pieces to see action in WW2: introduced in 1906, it pre-dates WWI. This particular example was an updated model with steel rims and rubber tires instead of the original wooden wheels (although ‘originals’ could also be found in the North-African battlefield).

28 August 1918


An unknown soldier with the Royal Engineers Signals Section putting a message into the cylinder attached to the collar of a dog at the Central Depot of the Messenger Dog Service at Étaples-sur-Mer.
(He wears four Overseas Service Chevrons on this right sleeve and the dog has been identified as an Australian Blue Heeler, cattle dog.)
"The use of messenger dogs for communications, although a late arrival in the communications arsenal, had by the end of the war been well tested and had become an important weapon. In November 1918, B.E.F. training pamphlet S.S. 135 ‘The Division in the Attack’ instructed that a group of messenger dogs should be assigned to each battalion as their employment could save the use of runners." (sniffingthepast.wordpress.com)
(Photo source - © IWM Q 9276)
Photographer 2/Lt. David McLellan
Colour by Royston Leonard

21 August 1918
The Attack on Moyenneville.
A Scots Guardsman giving a wounded German prisoner a drink. Near Courcelle-le-Comte.


1st Btn Scots Guards, with the 2nd Guards Brigade were in the assault on Moyenneville.
The village of Courcelles-le-Comte was taken by the 3rd Division on 21 August 1918
(Photo source - © IWM Q 6983)
Brooke, John Warwick (Lieutenant) (Photographer)
Colourised by Doug

Portrait of Junior Sergeant Sniper Vera Kobernyuk. Participated in battles since April 1944.


During this time, 19-year-old Vera destroyed 22 fascists.

Soviet soldiers prepare a 45 mm 53-K anti-tank gun for action

The Falaise pocket or battle of the Falaise pocket (German: Kessel von Falaise; 12–21 August 1944) was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy in the Second World War.


A pocket was formed around Falaise, Calvados, in which the German Army Group B, with the 7th Army and the Fifth Panzer Army (formerly Panzergruppe West), were encircled by the Western Allies. It is also referred to as the battle of the Falaise gap (after the corridor which the Germans sought to maintain to allow their escape). The battle resulted in the destruction of most of Army Group B west of the Seine, which opened the way to Paris and the Franco-German border for the Allied armies on the Western Front.
Six weeks after D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, the German Army was in turmoil. The Allied Army had experienced severe resistance from the German Army in Normandy. Caen was expected to be liberated by British forces immediately after the invasion but would take nearly two months to liberate. Similarly, St Lô was anticipated to be in US control by the second day of the invasion. The German forces fought furiously and US forces did not liberate St Lô until after the British liberation of Caen. However, the German Army had been expending irreplaceable resources in the attempt to defend the Normandy frontline. Also, the Allied air forces had air superiority up to 100 km behind enemy lines. Allied forces continuously bombed and strafed vital German logistical lines that provided reinforcements and supplies, such as fuel and ammunition. On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Union's Operation Bagration and the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive were in the midst of destroying the German Army Group Centre. In France, the German Army had used its available reserves (especially its armour reserves) to buttress the front lines around Caen, and there were few additional troops available to create successive lines of defence. To make matters worse, the 20 July plot—in which officers of the German Army, including some stationed in France, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler and seize power—had failed, and in its aftermath, there was very little trust between Hitler and his generals.
In order to break out of Normandy, the Allied armies developed a multi-stage operation. It started with a British and Canadian attack along the eastern battle line around Caen in Operation Goodwood on 18 July. The German Army responded by sending a large portion of its armoured reserves to defend. Then, on 25 July thousands of American bombers carpet-bombed a 6,000-metre hole on the western end of the German lines around Saint-Lô in Operation Cobra, allowing the Americans to push forces through this gap in the German lines. After some initial resistance, the German forces were overwhelmed and the Americans broke through. On 1 August, Lieutenant General George S. Patton was named the commanding officer of the newly recommissioned US Third Army—which included large segments of the soldiers that had broken through the German lines—and with few German reserves behind the front line, the race was on. The Third Army quickly pushed south and then east, meeting very little German resistance. Concurrently, the British and Canadian troops pushed south (Operation Bluecoat) in an attempt to keep the German armour engaged. Under the weight of this British and Canadian attack, the Germans withdrew; the orderly withdrawal eventually collapsed due to lack of fuel.
Despite lacking the resources to defeat the US breakthrough and simultaneous British and Canadian offensives south of Caumont and Caen, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, the commander of Army Group B, was not permitted by Hitler to withdraw but was ordered to conduct a counter-offensive at Mortain against the US breakthrough. Four depleted panzer divisions were not enough to defeat the First US Army. The disastrous Operation Lüttich drove the Germans deeper into the Allied envelopment.
On 8 August, the Allied ground forces commander, General Bernard Montgomery, ordered the Allied armies to converge on the Falaise, Chambois area to envelop Army Group B, with the First US Army forming the southern arm, the British the base, and the Canadians the northern arm of the encirclement. The Germans began to withdraw on 17 August, and on 19 August the Allies linked up in Chambois. Gaps were forced in the Allied lines by German counter-attacks, the biggest being a corridor forced past the 1st Polish Armoured Division on Hill 262, a commanding position at the mouth of the pocket. By the evening of 21 August, the pocket had been sealed, with est. 50,000 Germans trapped inside. Many Germans escaped, but losses in men and equipment were huge. A few days later, the Allied Liberation of Paris was completed, and on 30 August the remnants of Army Group B retreated across the Seine, which ended Operation Overlord.

An Infantry radio operator of the Polish 1st Armored Division during training.


The Polish 1st Armoured Division (Polish 1 Dywizja Pancerna) was an armoured division of the Polish Armed Forces in the West during World War II. Created in February 1942 at Duns in Scotland, it was commanded by Major General Stanisław Maczek and at its peak numbered approximately 18,000 soldiers. The division served in the final phases of the Battle of Normandy in August 1944 during Operation Totalize and the Battle of Chambois and then continued to fight throughout the campaign in Northern Europe, mainly as part of the First Canadian Army.