Great War 100 years on: The trigger-happy frontline snapper
The Great War 100 Years On Britain's first war photographer Ernest Brooks took 5,000 pictures, more than a 10th of all British official images taken during the conflict.
WHEN the First World War broke out, Ernest Brooks was the Royal Family's official photographer and his most famous image was a picture of King George V on a tiger hunt in India.
But in January 1915, at the age of 39, he enlisted in the Royal Naval Reserve and embarked on a career as Britain's first war photographer, spending time on the Western Front, in Italy and the Dardanelles.
By the time the war ended in 1918 Brooks had taken over 5,000 pictures, more than a 10th of all British official photographs shot during the conflict, many of them among the most iconic of the war.
Apart from candid images of soldiers on the frontline, he had a fondness for the dramatic use of silhouette, with one famous image showing soldiers walking along a ridge with the sun behind them.
But his career was not without controversy.
Brooks, who ironically used a German-made Goerz Anschütz camera, landed in trouble at Gallipoli, where he recreated action to show troops in a heroic light.
Fellow journalists were furious, the Army banned staged images as a result of the incident and he vowed to never again fake a picture.
A farm labourer's son from Berkshire, had grown up in Windsor where his father was employed on the royal estate.
After leaving school in 1890 at the age of 14, he too began work in Windsor Great Park.
Brooks's first encounter with photography came when he was hired by the widow of a diplomat whose daughters had cameras.
He was entrusted with developing the images and found himself fascinated.
He began taking portraits of royals and other notable people he would run into at Windsor and worked as a freelance newspaper snapper before joining the royal household.
Despite his distinguished wartime service, which led to him being honoured by both France and Belgium and awarded an OBE and British Empire Medal, Brooks's career ended in disgrace.
In 1925, after a photo was released of the Prince of Wales - the future King Edward VIII - dressed up in a kimono and wig for a theatrical production, Brooks was dismissed and stripped of his official honours.
He continued working until 1936, but struggled with alcoholism.
It is believed he had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since the war.
He lived with his wife in Hendon, north London, and was in his early 80s when he died in 1957.
The Royal British Legion is leading a national movement to say "Thank You" to the generation who lived through the war. That's not just the British forces, but those who fought alongside them from countries all over the world, as well as the people who played their part on the home front. Find out more at rbl.org.uk/thankyou