Question for Military (active or retired) Infantry members

[Maximus856]

Greatly depends on the operation and your specific task within that operation. My primary MOS was 0311, and my secondary was an intel MOS. As such, in my Afg. deployment, I worked on a 3 man team that was tasked out to different line units (eventually just myself and one other later on). Anyway, during one operation we did we were with LAR. We established a patrol base (1st picture) where we didn't have to do much aside from wait for orders to go do our thing. We would bring everything necessary for the whole op, but leave it behind to go do our actual op,usually a week (2nd picture). Here we would take shifts of setting up security. From here we would also go foot mobile, but usually not stray to far for too long for security reasons. With that said, we took the gear necessary to that mission and maybe 2 bottles of water +full load out. In Iraq, about 90% of our ops were leaving from the COP foot mobile, which could be anywhere from 5-20/25 kilometers. Not fun... I would only usually pack one chow, and lots of water in addition to whatever gear we were taking for that night. The heaviest pack I believe I had to carry was about 80-90 lbs in addition to the combat loadout. Lots of 5590s........Ammo wise? Typically, I would carry 8 mags. A double mag pouch on each side, 3 single mag pouches across my plate carrier, and one in the weapon, with the addition of two 9mm mags also on the side and one in the M9. On the truck, we kept about 2,000 7.62 to keep the m240 happy, and lots of other various ammo. That was our main priority, haha.

The Ritz

The Hampton, still had cots! Kept bare essentials on the truck. I'd show the hotel 7, but it would just be a picture of dirt.

The reason I posted these pictures is because it's really about readiness. Technically it was the same op, but depending on what was going on was what we had. We could easily throw our plate carriers on in the second picture and get out of dodge if neccesary. The first picture was on the PB we set up with actual posts, so we could have more. Whenever we'd roll out for a week, we'd throw everything in the trailer and leave. From there we'd leave everything and one guy in the truck and take a small element and leave. It was kind of like layers of comfort/necessity/security depending on what was going on. We did a lot of foot stuff, but to be honest I dont really want to get into how/why. It's not all top secret, but I dont feel comfortable just throwing it out there.

 

[SIGSHR]

As with so many things Army, it depends on the theater of operations, the mission, the type of unit-mech, light,airmobile-and the commander. A good commander will look out for his troops, a bad one won't,and a sure sign of a bad commander is the extent to which he tries to ignore his troops' needs and logistical problems. In Vietnam water was a major problem,the brass-who for the most part did not share their troops hardships-either tried to impose water rationing or insisted that water purified with halazone tablets was perfectly satisfactory. Likewise there were constant orders-always ignored-for the troops not to carry so many C-rations-"You'll be resupplied!"
The effectiveness of helicopter resupply was greatly exaggerated, due to a variety of reasons such as weather, maintenance,enemy action,over optimistic assumptions-incompetence.
As Kraigwy said, your ruck was like your weapon-you NEVER parted with it.
NEVER!.

 

[Punisher_1]

After a career of carrying all this high speed, low drag, lightweight equipment how many of the people posting have spinal issues that they deal with? They still haven't invented a way of carrying it all for a career length of time without injuries.

 

[Niantician]

Heh. Our unofficial Troop motto was "Death Before Dismount".

Which was painfully ironic when we deployed and fought as infantrymen, like sorta miffed we didn't rate the CIB style fighting.

If you want a Combat Infantry Badge, you should have joined the infantry and gone through our tougher training first. Ive acted as a combat medic with my limited skills but you don't see me asking for a Combat Medic Badge. I know I'm getting off topic, but the infantry is a brotherhood forged in sweat and blood. Both on and off the field of battle and you can't just waltz in and join it because you fired a few rounds.



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[kraigwy]

If you want a Combat Infantry Badge, you should have joined the infantry and gone through our tougher training first. Ive acted as a combat medic with my limited skills but you don't see me asking for a Combat Medic Badge. I know I'm getting off topic, but the infantry is a brotherhood forged in sweat and blood. Both on and off the field of battle and you can't just waltz in and join it because you fired a few rounds.

AMEN

Well Said

 

[Bud Helms]

Okay, gentlemen.

As a retired member of the USAF Airborne Artillery Brigade (AKA: AC-130 Spectre, the A-model in my case), may I say that for many of us, you guys were the reason for the mission.

I came here to close this thread because it is off topic and not about firearms, but I thought I'd give it one shot to get back on topic.

Here is what I rode when we went "outside the wire".


The First Lady: 53-3129. She gets credit for being the first commissioned C-130 in the USAF. A 1953 tail number.

2 ea 20mm GE Vulcan "Gatlings" up front.

2 ea 40mm Swedish Bofors Cannon in the back.

There were also provisions for 7.62 miniguns (2 ea) over the left wheel well, but with the advent of shoulder-fired SAMs they fell out of use quickly (low altitude and man-portable heat seekers don't mix. ).

Today the configuration of C-130-based side-firing gunships has advanced far beyond the days when I crewed on these. Oct 95 was my last flight.

 

[kraigwy]

Worked with those puppies a while when I was in the 38th SF Company in the early 70s in Alaska.

Certainly came a long ways from the C-47 (Puff) of the late 60s.

They had a 105 cannon to go with the mini guns.

 

[BlueTrain]

I have the CIB that my father earned in WWII, in Italy. He ended up being captured and spending a year in a large prison camp (where Americans were in the minority) not very far from where I spent almost two years myself. When I was there, however, I was almost ten years younger than he was when he was there.

Referring to the infantryman's load, one might note how few photos one sees of soldiers in WWII, either in Europe or the Pacific, carrying much of a load beyond their weapon, ammunition and water. Even troops going in over the beach in an assault never seem to have anything more than their haversack, though I'm sure they carried more than the standard load of ammunition. Exceptions included Southeast Asia, both in WWII and later.

 

[BlueTrain]

I might also throw in a comment that in most armies, it was apparently necessary to carry belted machine gun ammunition draped around one's neck or around your body bandolier fashion. Only recently does alternative methods seem to be used. In some armies, when magazine-fed light machine guns were introduced, additional magazines were democratically distributed throughout the squad or section so that the burden was (in theory) spread out more as well as allowing more ammunition to be carried for what was thought of as the most important weapon of the squad. That was not done in American practice, though, and the BAR man had a real load.

 

[Bud Helms]

They had a 105 cannon to go with the mini guns.

Right, that would be the H-model.

 

[SIGSHR]

No back problems here at age 63,though I have a fairly rugged constitution, at 5'10 and 200 or so pounds I am not exactly a shrimp. I learned to properly
pack a back pack in the Boy Scouts-had ZERO training on that in the Army.
One thing I credit the Army for in my war-Vietnam-is that they did enforce the regulation that the CIB was only for those serving in the 11B and related
MOS's. I knew several MPs who were turned down for it even though they accompanied infantry units as POW handlers on extended operations and rear echelon types who though they were entitled to one-and awarded it to themselves-when their bases were shelled or a "sniper" took potshots at them-were quickly told to take it off.When I was in the National Guard inthe 1970s I saw Official Messages stating that Marines serving in the Guard whohad been awarded the Combat Action Badge were NOT authorized to wear the CIB.

 

[Walter]

As a retired member of the USAF Airborne Artillery Brigade (AKA: AC-130 Spectre, the A-model in my case), may I say that for many of us, you guys were the reason for the mission.

Bud, as one of the grunts on the ground, my thanks to you guys for being there when we needed you. Your predecessor, "Spooky", kept my company from being overrun more than once over in "The Arizona" (actually, the An Hoa Basin), RVN, in early 1969. They only had the 7.62 GE miniguns back then, but that solid stream of orange arcing down was a welcome sight , many nights.

Walter

 

[Tom68]

Bluetrain, wearing that belted MG ammo "Pancho Villa" style is a good way to damage or dirty up the ammo and tie up a gun. I've seen it done, and at the Benning School for Boys it's a definite no-no...but some folks just seem to be unable to resist...or at least that's the way it was back in 1992.

In operational units, I'm sure the enforcement varies, but I'm willing to bet that most of the images showing that practice come either from the movies, or from fellows posing for pictures, because the middle of a firefight is the worst possible time to learn that looking cool has just rendered a key weapons system inop.

I'm not in the infantry anymore, so I'm sure things have changed, but like a previous poster put out before, back when we were practicing fighting the Krasnovians (a shout out to all of you who recall that insidious enemy), when we filled our rucks with boots and uniforms, we recognized that during a shooting war those items would be quickly replaced by MG ammo, smoke grenades, and extra water.

 

[rugerdude]

I served in Marine Recon from '08-'12. Over 2 deployments to Afghanistan, our bread and butter was helo-inserting into a totally non-friendly area, securing said area, and patrolling it on our own for up to 1 month at a time. We also got to do some high speed drug raids, as well as boring mounted patrols in the middle of nowhere.

Because we needed to be completely self sufficient without vehicles or ground unit support of any kind we were very heavy. If a firefight broke out and you had your full 90lb ruck on, you ditched it if you knew you could get back to it, but generally people kept them on. We had all of our battle necessities on our kits, and the only person who really needed to keep their pack on regardless was the radio operator.

I normally carried a ruck with med gear, an M72 LAW, batteries, spare personal radio, and water. Maybe some food. I cinched it to me so tightly that it was like an extension of my body armor. It was only about 25lbs so I could move really well with it on me.

On my second deployment I carried the M107 (.50 cal Barrett) and normally a small backpack with water and ammo. Maybe some kind of thermal or binos too. I didn't really have to carry much platoon gear since I had the big gun.

That's me back in 2010 just off of a short patrol. Note that my waist strap and chest strap are fastened and tightened. My shoulder straps are also as tight as they can be because I knew that I wanted to keep my gear with me and not have to try and recover it later, or worse, put that rocket launcher or radio in the hands of the enemy.

This is prior to inserting into our area of operations. We planned to be there a week, but our birds took too much fire on the way in and we had to abort. The .50 cal was separated into 2 parts for the actual insert but is assembled for this pic so you can tell what it is. It weighs about 35 pounds loaded, and I carried 4 extra mags at 5lb each plus my required food, water, batteries etc... I was very, very heavy. Still, in this instance I would have kept my ruck with me in a firefight if at all possible, and only dropped it once a rally point had been established.

Once we inserted and we had established a patrol base, I could then pick and choose what I needed for any particular patrol. If I took the fifty cal, I generally took only the fifty cal and ammo, but it depended on where we were patrolling and the surrounding environment.

 

[BlueTrain]

To Tom68 from the great state of Alabama, I understand what you're saying. But 1992 seems like only yesterday. However, there is no doubt that real life soldiers do things they see in the movies and vice versa. For instance, my son was a tank crewman for about 15 months in Iraq. Most of that time he was in Tal Afar. The rest of the time his platoon or company was attached to a Marine Corps unit somewhere else (He helped them celebrate the Marine Corps birthday, too). Anyway, I have a photo of him standing in front of his tank. He is armed with his pistol in a private purchase drop-leg holster and a shotgun. I asked him about the shotgun and he said, "Oh, that was just for the photo."

By the way, his unit also had personnel sent to the designated marksman school (or whatever it was) and did receive .50 cal. rifles. He said the unit thought they were useless for their role and they passed them on to infantry units. Also, for a time, they had an attached infantry platoon with their Bradleys. The infantry unit had weapons they never unpacked which stayed in the shipping container. Their own unit had a few captured enemy rifles but apparently they were of no particular interest to anyone and no one used them for anything. They also later turned in their pistols, too, and everyone got some variation of an M4 or M16.

In some armies the introduction of new small arms generally meant that new webbing or pouches were needed. I'm sure you've all seen the special belts that BAR men used in the army (into the 1970s, too). That was also the reason the British started using the large pouches that were used in WWII, so anyone could carry a couple of Bren gun magazines, although it cut down on the amount of rifle ammunition they could carry (made up for with bandoliers). I've never read anything that mentioned how that idea worked out in practice. Although I've known personally a few people who were WWII veterans of other armies, they were all cavalry (when the cavalry had horses). One was Polish and he competed in the 1936 Olympics. He liked to stand about six inches away when he talked to you.

 

[SPEMack618]

BlueTrain, my Grandfather was a BAR man in Europe. He drug out his belt one day and was showing it to all the grand kids. He also had a bandolier that was essentially three of the BAR pouches on a web strap.

He said that doctrine called for him to have an assitant gunner to help lug spare mags, but that never materialized. He was also supposed to be issued a .45 Automatic, but that never materialized either.

Our platoon sergeant was very quick to chastise anyone caught playing "Rambo" with ammo belts. Most of our guys would carry a drum for the SAW somewhere on thier vest.

In regards to a PDM, our TO&E, designed to fight the Russians in the Fulda Gap mind you, didn't allow for designated marksman at the individual platoon level. However, our H&H Troop did, and had several M-16A3s with nice optics and refurbished M-14s with nice optics issued. However, since our H&H Troop never left the wire, our Squadron Commander worked with the Troop commanders to ensure that every platoon had atleast one PDM rifle and we ran some ad hoc PDM training, too.

He had to carry a shotgun per Humvee in order to comply with the ROE about having a less lethal option.

As SIGHR stated, I learned to back a backpack/rucksack in the Boy Scouts, which served me well in the Army. I was lucky in that the furthest I ever had to carry a rucksack while deployed was no more than five or so klicks from where the Blackhawks dropped us off to where we established a patrol base.

In said rucksack, was mostly ammo and water, with a fleece, gloves, and a couple of pairs of spare socks as well. MREs were tossed out of a Blackhawk when we landed, still in cases, and we just lugged those to our patrol base as well.

In regards to back problems, my back gets stiff sometimes, but according to the VA, that was a result of a negative helicopter-ground interaction, so nothing too bad.

But then again, I'm still young and stupid, so we shall see.

 

[BlueTrain]

So maybe that shotgun my son had in the photo was for less lethal options. I used to think it was for anti-tank purposes.

One thing about all these standard operating procedures/standing orders, together with all the stuff in manuals, lesson plans, TOEs, and whatnot was that once people are on the ground and stuff starts flying around, everything goes to pieces, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, and sometimes even before anything starts to happen. This is the real life part of the military (any military, any time) that is either not generally realized or believed.

Units take casualties, which mean gaps in the carefully designed structure of a unit, and sometimes losses of equipment, sometimes vital equipment. Units may not have authorized equipment or personnel because someone else somewhere else had priority. Things don't work properly because they're too old or they were expected to be used under different conditions. Things wear out. No unit on deployment operating in the field (the expression used to be "campaigning") could possibly pass any inspection. No one in any unit in the field has full knowledge of what is actually happening and some have no idea at all what is happening.

The only one outside of the army who appreciates what the soldier is actually going through is a soldier on the other side: the enemy, who everyone believes is better equipped, better motivated, younger, more experienced, a much better shot, and much more willing to die, which is probably why more of them do.

 

[SIGSHR]

We were told "officially" not to carry M-60 ammo "Pancho Villa" style, as with so many "official" things in that conflict.....likewise helmets had a way of disappearing-they were sweat buckets.

 

[Colduglandon]

Kimio pardon if this is off topic but I thought it might be helpful.

Check out a Veitnam era film Charlie MOPIC filmed as docudrama. Interesting look at Long Range Patrols.

 

[Niantician]

Had an AC130 Spectre flying over us in Fallujah. Those mini guns are downright nasty. You can't hear the individual rounds being fired. Sounds like nothing else in the world of firearms. Only thing I can compare it to, is the sound of canvas being torn.