We're going to need a bigger supply dump

[Connectamabob]

I'm just surprised the boxes at the bottom of the stack can take that weight. I assume they're wood crates, but still. Each of those is full of food or ammo or whatever, and that adds up to a lot of weight when you start stacking em up high. I'm imagining the boxes at the bottom all crunched and half embedded in the ground.

[von Lucky]

I think because the boxes are small there's a lot of transfer of weight happening (spreading the load). Part of me now thinks it's photoshopped.

[fred]

I've looked at it a couple of times trying to work out if it is photoshopped or not. If it is, is been done very well.

[fred]

If you look at the box stacks in the back of this photo, they are pretty high



A caption of the original photo (and another site) says that it is canned goods, which would explain why the boxes support each other, as each will be exactly filled with tin cans, and the tin cans will be full too. So a pretty solid pile - but how they don't start tipping and leaning - a bit like the leaning tower of Pisa.

[tin shed gamer]

Its not a modern photoshop image it appears in multiple books,it appears in the'The War illustrated' magazine/paper of the period.It may be staged for propaganda purposes but its unlikely.
As I've mentioned before its the naive industrial scale of the conflict that's fascinating its very rare you can actually see the collision of the past and new technologies as they tumble into a new era in such a short period of time.its one of the reasons the period keeps me involved
Mark.

[von Lucky]

Totally.

It also makes you understand the huge efficiencies and waste that must be happening side by side in large conflict like this (like importing goats to Afghanistan).

[FramFramson]

the collision of the past and new technologies as they tumble into a new era in such a short period of time

This is why I love the interwar war period so. The last hurrah of a very old era indeed, steadily dying the long death that started with the scientific revolution, chipped away by a new era, one wholly technological and scientific and with little patience for the unknown. A confused era, where the wonderful and strange and ancient could be looked at with a new and genuinely scientific inquisitiveness, but with that same science yet to produce the dull, concrete answers that render the wonderful into the banal. An era for an odd type of magic, at once realistic, but still fantastic, the very best of both eras, with it's dreams of strange magical monsters and rocketships. Lovecraft understood this, as did more than a few others.

You can get a bit of the in the 50's too, but only if you get away from western nations, to far-off places, in the last era where there were any far-off places at all.   

[Stu]

Thats a lot of boxes - not sure why they would build the stacks so high!

No Health and Safety inspectors back then - we were told off for carrying boxes up a single flight of stairs in a warehouse. Imagine what a H&S inspector would make a carrying boxes up and down a giant stack of boxes.

My inner H&S inspector has got a nasty little tic in his eye right now (just like me when I see really stupid things at work) but the thought occurs - they must be on really hard ground there or the piles would sink in and fall over with a lovely domino/box breaking effect.

[monk2002uk]

These huge stores of food, clothing, and munitions had a significant demoralising effect on the German soldiers who fought hard in the opening Spring offensives of March 1918. After an enormous effort, the breakthrough did not result in a decisive victory. This, coupled with the contrast between the ersatz clothes and food that had caused ongoing significant discomfort and problems with shortages, had a powerful effect that shows up in many anecdotal accounts.

Robert