This famous image from IWM's collections captures a few seconds from one of the most well-known battles in British military history - the Battle of the Somme. The image is a still taken from a sequence of footage in the 1916 documentary film, The Battle of the Somme. The film was originally watched by millions of cinema-goers in 1916 and sequences from the film are now widely seen on television, in print and online. This iconic sequence lasts for around six seconds and shows a soldier carrying a wounded comrade on his back as he walks along a trench towards the camera.

The footage is believed to have been shot on 1 July 1916 by Lieutenant Geoffrey Malins, one of two 'War Office Official Kinematographers' (the other was Lieutenant John B McDowell) who filmed The Battle of the Somme. IWM has received over one hundred different names for the soldier carrying his dying comrade. We feel the question of the soldier's identity has still not been definitively proven. However, by examining the film frame by frame we have been able to learn a great deal about the rescue and its context.

This article reveals what we've discovered so far.