Buildings in rubble and defenses at Verdun; wounded French soldiers; corpses; German prisoners in a stockade.

Ammunition and supply trucks, armored cars, and oxen-drawn artillery advance along country roads.

Thompson claims to have shot 30 reels of film, primarily for Leslie's Weekly, but 70% of his material remained in France.

[7] Thompson's hopes of covering the Allied offensive of 1916 were dashed when he was wounded in France on July 2 at the Battle of the Somme.

[11][12] Thompson initially offered the exclusive rights of the film to Samuel Rothafel, managing director of the Rialto Theatre in New York City.

[8] The Army and Navy War College in Washington DC bought prints of the film to use in an official capacity for study and observation.

Officers were amazed at the detail in the film, such as the manufacture and piping of poison gas, the sappers digging mines under the enemy trenches by the aid of compressed air, how the ammunition is fed to the big 15-inch guns and their method of firing, the armored canal boats bringing up supplies in back of the lines, and the organization and working of the spy system.

[16] "To secure motion pictures of actual fighting in the European conflict requires a of mixture of skill, courage, the official influence and knowledge of military affairs.

All these qualities are combined in the person of Donald C. Thompson, staff photographer for Leslie's Weekly and official cinematographer to the French Government.

For that reason his collection of films stands in a class apart from the mass of stuff which has been exhibited in this country in the guise of "war pictures" and which has been in so many cases either utterly spurious or taken so far from the actual front line of battle as to be of little more than academic interest."

Besides their historical interest and the strong, bold portrayal of actual soldier life as it is today, the pictures have a number of unique features.

The Topeka Daily Capital, December 9, 1916[18] "Decidedly pro-Ally as the material is, it shows interesting effects of the German sweep through the war zone.

Massed bodies of French and English troops en route; piled stores of shells; slumbering cannon, aero craft, and German prisoners; views from aloft of trenches as well as of battleships all go toward packing the seven reels with interest.

The very fine photography and immense expanse of territory covered at a sweep of the camera lense, bring this collection of front-line-of-battle pictures up to any war films yet seen on this side, as far as merit goes.