WD-1- He Fired After Calling "Kamerad"

Mud and a sea of mud over which the lines of combat have just passed. You will note there is scarcely a place to step without falling into a shell hole. On this spot was concentrated particularly heavy drum fire, and a after the "mad minute” the attacking lines swept over. You can see the marks of their many footprints. When a German intended to surrender, he held up his hands and called out "Kamerad." This signal was of his own choosing and was recognized by both sides to mean that the German soldier who did this was through fighting. This Hun, true to form, took advantage of this sign to save his own life only to turn and fire on the Allied soldier who just a few moments previous had spared him. The Huns had a small pistol with a short barrel, which the doughboy called a "Kamerad pistol." because he would hold this in the palm of his hand when he put up his hands and called "Kamerad" and then use it to fire on his captor. There was but one fitting punishment for this - death.

(From Great War in 3D Online) Fisher Scientific Materials Company of Pittsburgh, PA, founded by 20-year old Chester G. Fisher in 1902, sold laboratory supplies to the Army during World War I. Fisher was tasked to equip a research laboratory to identify German gas weapons. The company exists today as Fisher Scientific. In the early Twenties, the company produced a set of 72 medium-format glass stereographs. All images were authorized by the French War Department and were obtained from French manufacturers Paris Stéréo and STL. The plates have a characteristic layout of a black center bar with logo and sequence number and a black bottom bar with the title.

Fisherview images are not in the standard French medium format, which is a glass plate 59-60mm x 129-130mm with a 6mm title bar at center. The Fisherview plate is 62-63mm x 126-127mm. The 6mm center strip was used for the company logo and a 12mm strip was created at the bottom for the number and title. The viewing area of a Fisherview plate is 6050mm2, or about 81% of the area of a standard French medium format view (7440mm2).

Production of photographic equipment was out of character for Fisher. The company does not have archives today that explain the reason for it. A possible explanation may be that Chester Fisher’s artistic bent led him to acquire rights to a batch of Great War stereo images when given the opportunity during his war work. He became a prominent art collector specializing in paintings related to alchemy and chemistry, building an extensive collection eventually donated to the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.

Fisherview plates were sold in boxes of 12 plates for the "Fisherview," a crude stereoviewer of two wooden boxes with the lenses in one and the image holder in the other; the inner box slides in-and-out to get the correct focus. The World War set was accompanied by a Catalog of Plates describing each view in much the same manner as the text on the reverse of Keystone stereoviews. The catalog mentions additional sets, all related to the war. They include the London Peace March, the return of American troops to New York, and the bombardment of Rheims.