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Mickey Mouse style apparatus to detect where enemy fire is coming from:

The Brewster Body Shield could still stop a machine gun bullet

Royal Artillery reconnaissance in Mesopotamia using the ‘limber pole ladder’

Para-tweeter: British homing pigeons were parachuted in to occupied territory with a request for local civilians to write down local troop positions, attach it to the bird and then release it.

Man over-bed: US sailors were trained to strap on bed mattresses in the absence of lifejackets

Pedal power: German soldiers generating electricity for communications and light

Now Hear This: Recruits at a US Navy training camp in Seattle receive an earful

Both sides would remove shell-damaged trees under cover of darkness and plant fakes – like this one installed at Souchez in May 1918 - to house snipers and lookouts. Made of canvas and chicken wire, it tested the nerve of the bravest occupant

Australian engineers from from 4th Field Company manoeuvre a dummy tank, made of wood and canvas, ahead of an assault on the Hindenberg Line in 1918

Bird’s eye view: A German spy pigeon wearing a time-delay camera on an aluminium breast harness

Bush fire: Camouflage became increasingly elaborate as war progressed. Here, Allied trips show off a captured Turkish sniper near Gallipoli in 1915

Hide and seek: This 1917 US experimental camouflage suit was not deemed a success. The wearer might as well have been carrying a sign on his head

In the saddle – 1915: The Kent Cyclist Battalion on parade. Touted as the new form of cavalry before the war, the bicycle was of limited use in trench warfare