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Mass-produced posters have been used to advertise commercial products and propagandize political and social causes since the invention of the lithographic process at the end of the eighteenth century. The poster acquired some artistic respectability by the late nineteenth century due to the design work of artists like Alphonse Mucha and Toulouse Lautrec. However, it was during the First World War that the recruiting poster became ubiquitous within the British urban landscape.

More than fifty of the British First World War posters in the William Ready Archives collection were authorized by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC) in the first eighteen months of the war. The PRC was a thirty member body organized by political party organizers, under the supervision of the War Office, with the express aim of aiding the raising of troop numbers in Britain’s volunteer army. The main modes of appeal were through mass recruiting rallies and through posters and pamphlets that encouraged enlistment. For designing the latter, the PRC drew on the expertise of Hedley La Bas and Eric Field of the Caxton Advertising Agency.

Gerald “Gerry” Bell was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1909. The future pilot’s first chosen career was medicine, but instead he served as a special RCMP constable while at the same time proving himself as a formidable athlete. He became a competitive sprinter, racing against the legendary Jesse Owens, and then a competitive amateur boxer, winning sixty-three of his sixty-seven bouts. While injuries prevented Bell from pursuing a professional career, his athletic prowess enabled him to become a trainer at the Berlin Olympiad of 1936.

On 23 November 1943, during Grove’s third mission over Berlin in five nights, a German fighter suddenly opened fire on his Lancaster, killing the rear gunner and mid-upper gunner. Then the enemy plane hit the bombs the Lancaster was carrying and Grove’s aircraft became a torch in the night sky. He forced the aircraft into a dive to try and blow out the flames, but his efforts were unsuccessful.

Grove and his surviving crew were four hours away from base with only three engines working, no functioning weapons and short of gasoline. Also, trying to fly back to England would make them a flaming target all the way. Grove had no choice but to tell his crew to jump for their lives. As the others jumped, he tried to keep the plane as steady as possible, observing the rule that the pilot always jumps last.

In the early years, pilgrims tended to be bereaved family members looking for the graves of their loved ones. This was a consequence of the British decision, made during the war, to not repatriate the dead but rather bury them in military cemeteries near where they fell. The Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC – renamed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1960) was established in 1917 to mark and maintain the graves of all the members of the British forces overseas, to build memorials to those with no known grave, and to keep records and registers. Canada and the other Dominions agreed to share with Britain the costs of maintaining these cemeteries and memorials in proportion to the numbers of their war dead.