Soldiers’ Pay

During the First World War the photographers Mole and Thomas created a series of photographs of soldiers taken at various camps across America. In each photograph the men stand in flag formation, those in uniform making up the red stripes and blue background and those in their underwear making up the white stripes and stars. Whether or not these images are a forerunner of kitsch, they make very striking and pleasing pictures. It is hard to imagine the amount of organization that must have gone into creating this seemingly pointless exercise. I took this to be an apt metaphor for life in the Army and the futility of the Great War, which does, in its way, reflect the tone of the book.