The packed old kit bag, 1916.
Includes soap, Oxo and ‘troubles’.
Aoife Keogh writes:
I’m currently in my final year of Visual Communications in Ballyfermot. I recently designed this infographic showing what a 1916 private soldier carried during the ‘Great War’ (fair few of them would have been Irish too), some of the stuff is particularly interesting and I think its something some of your readers might find it interesting too…
FIGHT!
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Interesting and it even looks like Aoife got the correct rifle silhouette. That’s pretty cool from a history point of view.
i bet you’re like my old man, can’t watch an old war movie without tutting and moaning about insignia, uniforms etc..
One doesn’t have to be old or even a man to do that scottser ;)
Not the military doodads, just the firearms. Target shooting as a sport ruins hollywood for you forever.
But also, my great-grandfather was in the Royal Munster Fusileers, and a few years ago I got the chance to shoot the kind of rifle he’d have shot, so that got me wondering about what his life had been like (turns out he survived V beach only to be sent to the Somme so it wouldn’t have been fantastic).
that’s very cool. what was the rifle?
The one I shot? Lee enfield Mk4 (he’d have used the MkIII):
http://guns.ie/photos/Events/2009/Mar22.MidlandsShooting/CNV00018_1a.jpg
The scariest bits were the little details on that thing. The way it uses a brass plate on the end that goes in your shoulder instead of the rubber pads and shock absorbent materials that target shooting rifles use for example – because you were meant to be able to use it as a club when the ammunition ran out. The kind of little detail that would strike you a few days later when you realised that something that looked silly had a rather dark reason for being that way, y’know?
The Irish Military War Museum have a Lee Enfield (no idea what model) at reception. They pretty much hand over weapons (all without firing pins) to people as they arrive so you can get a feel for them. When I was there they gave me a Tommy gun, the Lee Enfield, two AK-47s, an M16 and a bunch of pistols. Their collection is massive.
Then I drove the tank. Did the person who won the competition on Broadsheet ever go drive the tank?
Who’d you make this for, Kevin Myers? Those boys were canon fodder for Empire. Put that on your cut out.
Kevin Myers… or anyone who had family in the Irish regiments of the British army in WW1 and who might be wondering what manner of hell they went through.
Why didn’t she add a coffin? This is pro-empire rubbish.
Maybe it wouldn’t fit in the backpack?
Shovels were often part of the kit.
Because soldiers didn’t all carry a coffin with them of course.
Wow!!! You obviously have a deep seated hatred of all things English, grow up and move on, have you heard of the peace process ????
I hate empire. Love the English, but hate the fact that their elite sent them off to be slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands for the sake of profit.
War buys us the freedom to spout our Millie Tant Redux gibberish/Blimpish conservative talking points. Maligning the dead does us few favours.
World War One was not about freedom, it was a war for colonies and markets.
Colonies in Europe???? I knew the historians got it all wrong!!!!
Colonies in Africa and Asia. One of the primary reasons for the war was the friction caused by the scramble for colonies. France, England, Russia, Germany were all trying to maximise the extent of the colonial territories.
@ Rep – You don’t go for the historical approach to the subject then, I take it?
Seems to me like its a college project??? Seems you going a bit deep attacking a non existent jingoistic element??? Tiocfaidh ar la
20 bullets. Many probably didn’t get to fire 1 off.
I’ll have you know….
Oh sorry.
Carry on.
Fire one off, not knock one out….
You’re welcome.
Must’ve been pretty chilly without trousers.
Maybe that’s why trenches were so popular back then.
22) Trench Club
An infograph “showing what a 1916 private soldier carried during the ‘Great War’” , but where’s the Pickelhaube?
and who brought the football for the christmas kickabout?
You and whose army?
The youth and men of a nation were used as cannon fodder
misled and used by an Empire that a in couple of years tried
to stamp out an uprising and sent in the Black and Tans to
terrorise a risen people…..and lest us not forget it, while we
may remember them in the going down of the sun, lets revere
those who rose up, in rising of the morning sun, it is they who
fought for the freedom of a small Nation, those who were sarficed
in Flanders, did not achive Irish Independence.