Kit bags across the centuries

The Daily Telegraph recently had an illustrated article about a photographer’s creation of a series of photographic images to illustrate the contents of kit bags ( or their equivalent ) over the centuries. Most are perforce modern or relatively so, but one is reconstructed from the seventeenth century civil war, and one reimagined from the battle of Hastings.

The illustrated article can be seen at Inside soldiers' kit bags - from the Battle of Hastings to the Ukraine War

Looking at the amount each kit bag holds and thinking of its weight inevitably brings one as a medievalist to a persistent popular misconception. This is, of course, that medieval men in full armour must have been weighed down and almost immovable in their steel suits.

 

 First of all if that was the case, one might ask why did they bother wearing armour that made them both unmanoeuvrable and also vulnerable to their opponents and the terrain. The answer is, of course, that they could move and fight very well. 

 

Secondly it has been calculated that the modern soldier carries as much, if not more, weight into battle as a medieval man fully armoured.

There are a number of videos online that illustrate the mobility of men in armour. Here are three created by a Swiss academic, Daniel Jaquet, who appears in all of them.

Le combat en armure au XVe siècle looks at the flexibility that is possible and Can You Move in Armour? reconstructs the fitness routine - or showing off - of Jean Le Maingre, Maréchal Boucicaut, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt, and died a few years later as a captive in England.

Thirdly there is also, to show the comparison with modern equipment, the superb, and almost hypnotic, Obstacle Run in Armour - a short film by Daniel Jaquet

It is worth adding that Dr Jaquet is something like ten years older than the two men he is competing against.

My father’s World War II RAF kit bag is long gone - I think I just remember it - but I was too young to really think about it. I think that in the post-war world he used for a while as a golf club bag. As he died just before my sixth birthday I never was able to ask him about his wartime experience and only know what my mother recalled. I suspect that like many men caught up in those events he largely preferred to move on, although one, penultimate, family holiday did take us back to revisit St Aldhelm’s Head in Dorset where he had worked on radar.