All the Stuff Soldiers Have Carried in Battle, From the 11th Century to Today

BY LIZ STINSON

08.19.14 | 

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A recent project from Thom Atkinson's documented the kits british soldiers took into battle throughout the ages. This collection is from the Battle of Hastings in 1066. You notice how few objects soldiers had compared to now--that's because of weight. THOM ATKINSON

In the 13th century, if you wanted to kill a man your best bet was using a battle axe. By the 16th century, swords and daggers had given way to muskets. During World War I, hand grenades were a standard part of every British soldier’s inventory. And today? Soldiers carry iPads alongside their rifles. 

Photographer Thom Atkinson documents the battle kits of British soldiers over the course of 1,000 years. The series, appropriately titled Soldiers’ Inventories, starts with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and chronicles the gear soldiers carried into 12 other battles, from the battle of Waterloo to the war in Afghanistan. “Britain spends a lot of its time fighting people,” says Atkinson. 

Each photograph is like a wartime version of Things Organized Neatly. Of course, the kits include things designed to kill people in ever more efficient ways. But they provide a glimpse into what the boredom and monotony of war, with things like playing cards, checkerboards, and iPads. To gather the objects, Atkinson visited living history communities, whose members collect such things for for reenactments. He would spend hours organizing the gear just so, beginning with bigger pieces like a musket or a jacket and filling in the holes with smaller objects. “It’s a lot like Tetris,” he says. 

Today’s kits include everything from a basic sewing kit to a mine extraction kit. Thom Atkinson 

Looking at Atkinson’s photos is like watching history fast forward and rewind. The objects tell the narrative of war and how it combat changed over the centuries, but also highlight just how big a role design has played in warfare. As we’ve developed new ways of killing, we’ve had to develop new ways of armoring the men and women we send forth to fight. Take for example, a soldier’s clothing. Early on, soldiers wore colorful vests and coats, but as weapons became more sophisticated, and able to kill with greater accuracy from greater distances, camouflage became increasingly important. 

“The fact that certain objects recur is more fascinating than the ones that evolve,” he says, alluding to the point that there’s a spoon in every picture and a helmet in most. Also interesting is looking at the sheer loads of stuff soldiers had to bring with them. In the earliest photo, you notice warriors had fewer things to carry into battle—this is for a practical reason. “It’s because of weight,” says Atkinson. As you get to modern-day warfare, soldier carry a lot of stuff. But all of it has been optimized to make the material as light as possible, allowing soldiers to haul much more with them at any given time. 

Atkinson recalls showing a current day soldier photos from earlier periods. The solider was horrified by the close-quarter, often hand-to-hand nature of warfare centuries ago. “He was saying that you had to be a lot braver to be a solider in other periods,” Atkinson recalls. He doesn’t agree. “I don’t know whether it would make that much difference if you’d been shot of chopped with an axe—it’s not a nice thing to have happen to you.”