Skeleton Crew

"How long ago did these victims of thirst fall by the wayside?" wrote Georges-Marie Haardt, leader of the Citroen Central African Expedition of 1924. Haardt’s group - the first to cross the African continent by automobile - found the parched remains of three travellers in the Sahara’s Tanezrouft region, 50 miles from the closest well.

The book Haardt wrote with his second in command, M. Louis Audouin-Dubreuil, describes the scene: "Their clothes, mere frayed-out tatters, still remain; from an open bag grains of corn lie spilled, and on this cursed soil are unable to take root. We pass on in silence."

Haardt needed no reminder of the dangers of the Sahara. During the desert leg of the 15,000-mile trip the expedition’s eight trucks travelled for more than 330 miles without finding a drop of water. "Any breeze there is becomes a torment," the team reported. "We are suffocated, saturated with dust; we could almost believe ourselves to be like men turned into red brick" This photo was published in the June 1926 article "Through the Deserts and Jungles of Africa by Motor."