World War I: stretcher bearers of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) lifting a wounded man out of a trench. Oil painting by Gilbert Rogers, ca. 1919.

Below, a trench in which a man stands lifting one end of a stretcher over the top of the trench. Above, three man receive the stretcher, on which lies a man with his face covered with a bloody bandage. Left, a shell explodes. The background is buff, the trench and the figures are predominantly grey, yellow and green, giving an impression of mud everywhere

Of the men in the upper half, two have armbands with red crosses on a white ground, in addition to uniform badges with red crosses on, while the third, on the left, has only the red cross badge on his uniform, and no armband

The body of the man on the stretcher is foreshortened to show the soles of his boots, a device also found in paintings by Mantegna, Borgianni, and Rembrandt

1919

1 painting : oil on canvas ; painting height 303 (left)-302 (centre)-304 (right) x width 303 (top)-302.5 (centre)-302 (bottom) cm; diagonal top right to bottom left 427 cm, top left to bottom right 428 cm

Gilbert Rogers

At the end of World War I a team of 13 artists was set to work in a studio on the Fulham Road, London, by Lt. Col. F.S. Brereton, as chairman of a Committee for the Medical History of the War, sponsored jointly by the War Office and the RAMC (Meirion and Susie Harries, The war artists: British official war art of the twentieth century, London : M. Joseph, 1983, p. 128). Gilbert Rogers, a painter from Liverpool, was a contributor to the work and the officer who managed the others (Gilbert Rogers, 'Artists of the R.A.M.C.', The times, 23 August 1920, p. 13). Their work was exhibited at the Crystal Palace, London, in 1920 and reviewed in the Times ('War memories at the Crystal Palace. With the R.A.M.C.', The times, 19 August 1920. p. 13). In that review, under the heading "Grisly truthfulness", the correspondent says "There are some large canvases by Mr Gilbert Rogers, which in the brutality of the treatment are horribly real--"Stretcher bearers in difficulties", "In the 1917 offensive, and "From over the top" (like Mr [David] Baxter, Mr Rogers was formerly with the R.A.M.C. and his technical detail is professionally correct)--in which memory seems to identify the exact spot, the very incident, depicted'

Medicine and surgery in the Great War 1914-1918, London: Wellcome Institute, p. 13, no. 7

Wellcome Collection 16182i