My father brought this aerial photograph back from France in 1919. I had seen it when I was a boy, but only recently had it been passed along to me. Since its story was not passed along, this is my reconstruction. As I remember, Dad said he found it in a downed German aircraft. The pilot was dead, but his body had not yet been removed. My father assumed the pilot had been using it to navigate the battlefield. The question is: Where is this?
I confess that I needed help and got it from Kevin Adams, who is much better at this than I am. He noticed "HoHe285" at the top. "Hohe" is German for height, and so he figured this is a photograph of Hill 285 in the Meuse-Argonne region and added that the arrow at the bottom left points north. It was the site of heavy fighting between German and French forces from 1914-1918 according to p. 322 here:
What is more, today Hill 285 is the site of a monument to the French killed there and is marked on this link from Google Maps. While the exact location of Hill 285 isn't marked on the photograph, it seems rather likely that it is generally in the center and that the craters showing in a line in the upper right of the photograph are those on Butte Vauquois. If anyone has other ideas, please leave a comment.
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