A PHOTOGRAPHIC exhibition, aiming to illustrate the sacrifices made by young soldiers in the Second World War, is going on display at a regimental museum.

The display, showing men aged between 18 and 24 wearing the types of uniforms their grandfathers wore during the conflict, opens at the weekend at the Green Howards Museum, Richmond, North Yorkshire.

The exhibition, called Doomed Youth, was prepared by 22-year-old Emma Poole, a student at the University of Northumbria. She was inspired by photographic portraits of young soldiers taken after their training, before going to fight for their country.

Emma borrowed uniforms from the museum and photographed her friends wearing them in modern-day settings - including a pub, a takeaway restaurant and an Internet caf.

The colour portraits, each framed in dark wood, are backed up by quotations from war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

Emma said: "It is difficult to imagine our teenage brothers, cousins and friends experiencing the horrors we have seen only in photographs or on film. I asked my sitters to imagine that they had been trained and were about to go to war. I think these feelings of uncertainty are apparent in their expressions and they seem distant and uncomfortable in these modern environments.

"The images have presence and importance, as if the viewer is being asked to commemorate these young men."

Major Roger Chapman, of the Green Howards Museum, said: "Emma's photographs are a powerful reminder of just how young our soldiers were as they fought in the war - a fact that is often difficult for young people of today to grasp."

The exhibition opens on Sunday and runs until November 30.