Inventories Of War: Soldiers' Kit from 1066 to 2014

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

The similarities between the kits are as startling as the differences. Notepads become iPads, 18th-century bowls mirror modern mess tins; games such as chess or cards appear regularly.

Photos by THOM ATKINSON
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk