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Inventories of war: soldiers’ kit from 1066 to 2014

The photographer Thom Atkinson has recorded 13 military kits for his ‘Soldiers Inventories’ series.

12 August 2014

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1066 huscarl, Battle of Hastings ‘The Anglo-Saxon warrior at Hastings is perhaps not so very different from the British “Tommy” in the trenches,’ photographer Thom Atkinson says. At the Battle of Hastings, soldiers' choice of weaponary was extensive. For a full list of the items displayed, click here Picture: THOM ATKINSON

On a winter’s day in 1915 the family of one Capt. Charles Sorley – athlete, soldier and poet – received a package. It was his kit bag, sent home by his regiment from the Western Front, where Sorley had been killed, aged 20, at the Battle of Loos. Out of this bag came a life abridged: personal effects, items of uniform and a bundle of papers, from which emerged his now famous sonnet When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead.

A new photographic survey of military kits now illustrates that curious combination.

View all 13 costumes here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/11006139/Inventories-of-war-soldiers-kit-from-1066-to-2014.html