On The Land

An 8-minute WWI film documenting actual combat operations on the Western Front in France. The opening frame shows a crew of soldiers in British/American-style Brodie steel helmets working a wheeled field gun at close range under tree cover. At roughly the midpoint, the film cuts to a tactical military map marking locations in the Lorraine region of France — towns including Metz, Mars la Tour, Chambley, Noveant, Thillot, and Lachausse — placing the action in the St. Mihiel salient area. The film also shows the devastation wrought on French towns, with large mounds of rubble piled against bombed-out multi-story buildings, and concludes with footage of active artillery bombardment, smoke billowing from an explosion beside damaged structures. Shot as raw or official combat documentary footage with a characteristic sepia tone, it is a direct visual record of land warfare on the Western Front, not the agricultural film the title might suggest.