The Powerful Tommy’s War

World War I was the first modern war with airplanes, armored vehicles, and the VPK, Vest Pocket Kodak which allowed soldiers to take cameras with them to the barracks, trenches, on leave, and the battles themselves. For the first time with this new technological advancement came unofficial images from the eyes of the soldiers who were putting their lives on the line.

In addition to photographs soldiers also recorded their wartime experiences in diaries and letters from the marches to the rations, including the fighting and their fears or in some cases even discussing the possibility of their own death. Richard Van Emden has put together a powerful story of World War I using both images and the written word from the photos, diaries, and letters of the soldiers in Tommy’s War: The Western Front in Soldiers’ Words and Photographs.

The soldiers who wrote the diaries and letters came from different ranks and some survived the war while others didn’t. The book is arranged like a diary and feels very personal as the voices and images shed a new light on the war capturing the view at eye level making the experience a very human one.