A group of 'Kitchener' men of the Devonshire Regiment, 1915. All wear Marching Order of 1914 pattern leather equipment and those armed have obsolete Lee-Metford rifles.
The leather equipment came about as a result of a pressing need to equip the large numbers of 'Kitchener's Armies' forming in the UK after the outbreak of war in August 1914. The Mills Web Equipment Company had previously supplied the British Army with their Mills-Burrowes design 1908 Pattern Equipment, but would take some time to meet the urgent demand for the hundreds of thousands of sets now required.
The 1914 leather equipment was a stop-gap measure to meet this urgent demand. It closely copied the 1908 pattern where possible and included the webbing haversack and pack, but with leather straps. The unique cartridge carriers of the Mills-Burrowes design, with their diagonal strap for load-transferrence, proved difficult to copy in leather, so a pouch similar to the old Slade-Wallace pattern was used, while the diagonal strap was moved to the sides of the waistbelt.
