British Army Captain Leslie Skinner, a Methodist minister (left) and an unidentified private (right), both of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomnary light cavalry regiment of the British Army Reserve smoke cigarettes as they wrap a deceased comrade in sack cloth in the British forward area. The soldier was killed in action during Operation Neptune, the amphibious Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, part of the larger Battle of Normandy, code named Operation Overlord. The cigarettes were supplied as an antidote to the smell of the decomposing bodies. Normandy, France. June 1944. 


May he rest in peace

British Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks, Commander of the XXX Corps, in the company of soldiers of the Royal Canadian Artillery. The person to whom he points is the Australian correspondent King Watson, of the Sydney Daily and Sunday Telegraph. He wears the Australian military insignia of the Rising Sun; Nijmegen, Holland, February 1945.

The General pays visit

M10 Wolverine tank destroyers of 75th Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery of British 11th Armoured Division crossing a Bailey bridge over the Meuse-Escaut (Maas-Schelde) Canal at Lille St. Hubert, Belgium, 20 Sep 1944. 