Sipsey Street Irregulars: Military kit through the ages: from the Battle of Hastings to Helmand

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Military kit through the ages: from the Battle of Hastings to Helmand

From the crude weaponry and armour of the Battle of Hastings, to the high-tech kit of modern conflict, a new photographic survey explores the personal equipment carried by the common British soldier through the past 1,000 years

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: The "equipment is not "crude" or "primitive" In EVERY era it is "state of the art" and the best available at that time. We would do well to remember that a sword ,longbow, crossbow, muzzleloader, or SMLE in the hands of a trained man, is just as deadly RIGHT NOW--TODAY as it was in its heyday. There are NO dangerous weapons , only dangerous men.---Ray; August 25, 2014 at 8:49 AM
Kenneth Moore said...: Big differences in today's soldier than over last 1,000 year!

No doubt too, the weight difference of today's "basic load"! Wonder what would be?

A huge quality difference in weapons today that last few hundred years too.; August 25, 2014 at 10:33 AM
Anonymous said...: Mr. Moore; No not really. The quality is relative. The Yew longbow is still the finest wooden bow of its kind ever made. The steel windless crossbow was so difficult and exacting to make that modern craftsmen have yet to match it. Period sword steels are still unsurpassed in both quality and craftsmanship. The SMLE is far and away a better weapon than any than the AR-15. Saying we are better today is simply wrong. FYI The "basic load" for an infantryman has been 70 pounds for about the last 3000 years, its only in our "civilized" period (the last 100 years), that loading the infantry down like mules has been popular with governments.---Ray; August 25, 2014 at 3:50 PM
Anonymous said...: A revealling article on the loads carried by soldiers through the ages:

http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/06/23/politics/the-soldiers-load-the-immobility-of-a-nation/

III; August 25, 2014 at 4:58 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Military kit through the ages: from the Battle of Hastings to Helmand

4 comments:

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