"Everything seems very peaceable where I am. I haven’t heard any guns yet." (Letter to Mother, 5/10/1918)

John A. McGill

Detail from a postcard, "Yanks going into action, France" [ca. 1918] War: World War, 1914-1918 Branch: Army Unit: G Company, 23rd Engineers Service Location: Glen Burnie, Maryland; Camp Meade, Maryland; France

Stationed with the 3rd Armored Division in France in the summer of 1918, John McGill apologized to his mother for his lack of correspondence, explaining, "I haven’t anything to write." More likely, the sights and experiences of World War I were not easy to describe, as the 226 photographs in his collection contradict the idea that he had nothing about which to write. Focused on subjects such as wire entanglements, interiors of trenches, machine gun nests, downed German planes, and damaged churches, these photographs depict both the instruments of the war as well as the devastation it wrought on the French landscape.