“You live with what's on your back, you fight with what's on your belt and survive by what is in your pockets.”
Belt order is fighting order, so contents should be restricted to what you need for combat: mainly ammunition, water, NBC gear and battle first aid items.
The kit may also provide some means of shelter or sustenance should the wearer be separated from his rucksack, but within reason.
Some official lists of equipment require the infantryman to carry pot scrubbers and boot polish during an assault.
Many armies will issue several types of camouflage clothing, but usually the soldier only gets one set of webbing, the majority of it dark green, which he must use in desert and snowfield.
Making webbing brown would help, but the straps are straight lines, which the human eye is very adept at picking out. Webbing should be made from a material with a pattern of neutral grey, beige, red-brown and charcoal: Disruptive Webbing Pattern.
To break up the shape, the colours should be printed in transverse bands. The pattern used in French “Central European” camouflage may be suitable with a change of colours. The same pattern would also break up the rectangular shape of pouches and rucksacks.
This pattern can be customized with white tape for snow operations, green tape for jungle or dark grey for night operations.
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| Click here for a sketch of a prototype STABO harness. |
The Stabo harness was invented in Vietnam for extraction or insertion by helicopter winch.
It is actually quite simple in construction: two adjustable suspension straps with loops for an issue belt.
The rear strap ends extend into leg straps that can be passed between the thighs and fasten to the bottom of the front straps.
When not needed the leg straps are folded and secured by bands of elastic, allowing full freedom of movement.
Such a harness would also be useful for climbing and rappelling, so have rescue and MOUT applications, and therefore be useful to all soldiers, not just those who insert by helicopter.
Any harness or webbing system should be capable of being easily and quickly removed in the event of an NBC alert. Some designs of chest rig may not meet this criteria, so increase the time it takes to don protective clothing.
The belt should be easily adjustable to allow for wear over extra clothing or NBC gear.
The rear straps of a harness should have two carrying loops, allowing the soldier to carry a parka, sleeping bag, stretcher/sleepmat, camelback, blanket, waterproof etc without needing a pack.
Carrage of ammunition, water and shell-dressings can all be catered for by the waterbottle/ammo pouches that Mike proposes.
We'll call these “medium utility pouches”, since the FFD/compass pouch is sometimes called a small utility pouch.
I particularly like the idea that nearly every pouch that you open would contain a shell dressing. The variety of equipment carried can be varied without disassembling the webbing.
Troops on a disaster relief operation have more need to carry water than ammo. One pouch used to carry water should also carry a Natick stove, fuel, purification tablets and a filtration bag.
Three medium utility pouches at the back could be used instead of a buttpack or kidney pouches.
In Vietnam, many soldiers preferred to carry their ammunition in Claymore mine bags.
These were either used like shoulder bags, or worn tight against the sides with the straps crossed over the chest.
Two medium utility pouches sewn together and provided with a strap can be used in the same way, as can a buttpack.
A snaplink would allow the bags to be hung up or run down lines and would be useful for collecting spent magazines.
In many armies, the respirator is carried in a bag on the belt.
In the British army, it is also acceptable to carry this bag by shoulder strap, so long as you are never more than five paces away from it. This option is very useful for personnel such as drivers.
The bag could be hung in the “Alert” position used by Tommies for two world wars: in other words, suspended from the neck to ride over the chest.
A trick used by airborne soldiers was to mount the bag upside-down, so the gas-mask dropped into the hands as the bag was opened.
How to carry the rest of the NBC suit is usually solved by carrying it in a poncho roll or similar piece of material. This is attached to the top or bottom of the buttpack/kidney pouches or the rucksac.
If the respirator case is carried by a strap then provision might be made for attaching the NBC roll to this.
Some manufactures tout the fact that their design of NBC roll can be rapidly removed. One of the first things you'll do during an alert is remove your pack or webbing so you can pull on the NBC smock, so it is quick-opening rather than rapid-removal that is an important feature of NBC rolls
Alternately, respirator and other NBC gear is packed into one of the detachable side pockets of the issue rucksack. When the rucksack is stowed, the side-pouch is worn as a daysack if an NBC threat is likely.
The other side-pouch may be packed for use as a patrol-pack. It may hold a hat and gloves, goggles, toilet paper, cordage, a water-bladder, metal canteen-cup and brew kit, emergency food, stowaway shirt, and mission-appropriate items. At the top will be the rain-poncho.
A buttpack (Large Utility Pack?) should have provision for straps at the top and bottom and attachment points on the side for medium utility pouches. The buttpack should be capable of being worn on the back or belt or used with a shoulder strap.
In some situations a buttpack or kidney pouches is unnecessary weight or may hinder riding in a vehicle. Its capacity is a temptation to carry extra gear. Its position makes it hard to easily access.
Items such as buttpacks should be easily detachable from the belt and capable of alternate modes of carry.
Mike Sparks suggests that the buttpack should contain 3 MREs, a Poncho and a lightweight sleeping bag. This caters for shelter and sustenance in a small package.
Mike's thoughts on solving the soldier's load are nicely summarized on this page.
Mike's complimentary suggestion is that the rucksac should cease to be regarded as a personal item. Instead it becomes a “log pack” filled only with food, ammo and water.
During a resupply, the troops swap their partially emptied packs for fully packed ones supplied by sustainment personnel.
For shelter or sleeping, the troops use the poncho and sleeping bag in their buttpack.
Log packs will need some form of distinctive marking so that it is known whether they contain ammo for a rifleman, grenadier, SAW or GPMG gunner. Such markings should be geometrical as well as colour coded for distinction in low-light conditions. My suggestion is a circle for riflemen, and arch for grenadiers (resembling a M203 grenade), square for SAWs and triangle for GPMG (representing a tripod)
The log-pack is a good idea, but there are other items that a soldier may need in the field that are not really appropriate to the belt order, even if there is room to carry them.
These include such things as warm or clean clothing (shirt, underwear, socks, fleece), washkit, carabineers, extra medical items, spare toilet paper, sleepmat, mosquito net, sections of tent pole and pegs, sandbags, wirecutters, weapon-cleaning kit, spare bootlaces, earplugs, clear trash bags, sewing-kit and 100mph tape, air to ground marker panels etc.
The solution to this is threefold:
Firstly, some items like the ground to air signalling panel can be made a permanent part of the log pack's inventory. It is possible that such an item could also be designed to be used as an emergency stretcher.
Larry Altersitz has suggested that one side of such an item should be camouflaged, and this suggests even more uses for the item. The “overt” (high visibility) side of the item should have an aide memoire of ground-to-air signals printed on it.
The second idea for log-packs is to have a small-pack that either attaches to the log-pack, or fits inside.
The British PCLE system has a 20-litre “3-way pack” that can be worn on its own, attached to the webbing yoke or attached to the PCLE Bergen.
This “patrol pack” might even be a second buttpack.
This patrol pack can be worn on the back when the log-pack is not being carried, and gives the soldier extra carrying capacity.
When a soldier exchanges his used log-pack for a fresh one, he simply pulls out this patrol pack and places it in the new log-pack (space for such an item having been left when the log-pack was packed at the depot).
In some units gear within the rucksack is divided into several bags: A patrol pack at the top of the bag hold mission-specific, poncho etc. A shoulder-bag below holds personal gear, stove, minor first aid, sewing kit, wash-kit, spares, repair kit and replacements, some rations etc. The remainer of the clothing is in waterproof bags at the bottom of the pack.
This 1941 USMC pack system uses a shelter roll, haversack (assault pack) and knapsack (buttpack).
The third part of the solution is that some items can be strapped to the outside of the log-pack, patrol pack and/or harness.
Many British Bergens such as the PCLE have large pockets that can be unzipped and used as small packs.
Even more interesting is that these pockets can attach directly to the PCLE equipment yoke. Under the rucksack's attachment points for these pockets are mounting points for equipment straps.
There are certain aspects of the log-pack concept that need resolving. The most obvious is the issue of clothing and the more bulky of non-consumable/disposable items.
After much reflection, I think I've answered these points.
The solution to the question of clothing is to cut down on the number and bulk of the items a soldier carries, and use what he has more efficiently.
Many outdoor writers will pay lip-service to the idea of the layer system, then go on to recommend some thick down jacket.
An extra layer of thermal underwear worn next to the skin can be just as warm as a fleece or down jacket worn as midwear.
What's more, two suits of thermal underwear take up less weight and bulk but can be worn together or alternately for greater versatility.
Also, garments such as string vests and Brynje underwear have a broad comfort range, so can be kept on when temperature/heat output is varied.
Polypro, Coolmax and Silk are all easily washed in the field and quick to dry.
A common mistake is dressing too warm. Marching, carrying a heavy load and wearing body armour all contribute to warming a soldier.
A good rule of thumb here is that if you are not slightly chilly when standing still, you are wearing too much.
The soldier operating with a log-pack should wear a sufficient level of insulation, made up of thin garments such as merkalon, coolmax etc.
A spare suit of underwear is carried rolled up in his shelter roll, which also contains his lightweight sleeping bag, poncho and related gear. The soldier changes into this spare suit to sleep at night, allowing his day wear to dry, or he can use it as an extra layer of insulation should it become unexpectedly cold.
In his buttpack is a “stowaway shirt” of Parasilk (nylon), or better still, pertex.
This small-packing item can be easily donned should the weather turn cold or to prevent chilling should the soldier stop.
If made of pertex, the shirt can also be used as the soldier's towel, and is used in conjunction with the very minimal wash kit carried in the buttpack.
The campaigner's best friends, plenty of dry socks in waterproof wrap, are stowed in the shelter roll, buttpack and pockets.
Having removed the clothing items from the log-pack, let us consider the form of the pack itself.
The log-pack should be a very basic item, and therefore cheap to produce: something along the same lines as the French Army's frameless F1 rucksack.
The log-pack can be used in conjunction with a frame, but can also be carried without one.
The proposed design has a pocket between the main compartment and the soldier's back, and this is used to carry a brown folding kip-mat, similar to those currently issued to the German army, but with the pole and line attachment points that Mike has proposed.
Currently kipmats are carried on the outsides of packs, and being usually a single colour are an easily distinguished regular geometrical shape: a rectangle, circle or cylinder, depending on the angle.
Kipmats are bulky and not a consumable item, but do not need to be a personal item either. Having provision to carry a mat inside the log-pack solves several problems, and also makes the pack easier to carry when an external frame is not being used.
In addtion to ammo, water and food, each log-pack would come with disposable socks, an EVAC panel, a hank of string, small roll of tape and possibly a toggle rope.
It's possible that this toggle rope may not be a rope. On the urban infantry page, the SWAT trick of carrying a length of 1" nylon strapping is mentioned. This could be modified to have toggles and loops so they could be joined together.
Also possible is that loops could be sewn to the strap so that it can be used as a ladder.
Water in the log-pack would be in bladders, with the cap of the same diameter as used on the GI water-bottle so the issue drinking tube can be attached.
Ref.By the Author of the Scrapboard : | |
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 | Attack, Avoid, Survive: Essential Principles of Self Defence Available in Handy A5 and US Trade Formats. |
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 | Crash Combat Fourth Edition Epub edition Fourth Edition. |
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