There has been a lot of good info posted here lately. I particularly am interested in the Civil War gear that was described in such great detail.

Someone who has spent a lot of time dismounted with issued gear can relate to the suck factor those soldiers must have experienced.  Sounds like "lightweight kit" has always been a problem for the US Army.

I was recently asked about packing lists for the rucksack.  No matter what unit I was in, I always had in my large ALICE Pack:

* Poncho with hood cinched up, for use as a hooch, rucksack cover, or poncho raft only, never worn as an actual poncho, which is pointless

* 5 bungees for making my poncho hooch (the OD green/camo ones sold at Clothing & Sales)

* WOOBIE (poncho liner)

* Waterproof bag (most of your packing list items go inside this in the ruck)

* Pairs of socks x the # of days + 1 or 2 you will be out

* Foot powder

* Sleep shirt when I first was in, which then became the thick polypro shirt, which then became the lightweight polypro shirt for me

* 2 QT Canteen(s).  I carried 2 on the ruck in the 2 QT carriers, and even sewed one of the carriers directly to one of my large rucks. I then made a 1" webbing strap system like Tactical Tailor used to do for the other side.  You drink your water off the ruck when in the prone, facing out, pulling security during long halts or patrol bases, without cutting into your water on your LCE or vest.

* Personal hygiene kit, with toothpaste and toothbrush, razor, soap, and sewing kit

* Gore-tex parka

* Broken down MRE's

* Chem lights, IR and visible

* 50 ft of 550 cord

* Cut down puss pad

Depending on the mission, various essentials would be added, which was usually a radio or SATCOM, antennae, batteries, extra ammo, demo, pyro, hide site equipment, optics

Woobie. Always take your woobie.

Can't believe I didn't put that in there. Going senile I guess. I don't even take civilian trips without my woobie.

This stuff can get me through a marathon, and that was with a sprinkler dousing at mile 18, pouring rain at miles 0-12. literally wet feet, zero blisters.

I got ya. Doesn't matter if I have to bungie it to the outside of my ruck. It always goes with.

I've made several stuff sacks for my woobies. My first one was a British stuff sack I bought at a cool surplus store outside of Fort Lewis.  I fixed it eventually.  The others I made from very thin OD Green nylon I got from a guy in LRS, who used it for making synthetic leaves for his Ghillie suit system.

I always keep a woobie in one of these stuff sacks in my 3-day pack when I travel.  I'm thinking about putting a sleeping bag zipper in one of them, as some guys used to do.

I had a Scout Platoon Sergeant who had one of the space blankets from an aid bag sewn over his woobie, with a sleeping bag zipper installed.  He almost melted in a snowstorm with that set-up. Lessons learned from other people's mistakes.

Does anyone here have experience with the Kifaru Woobie?  It has sewn-in stuff sack, and no sew-through batting.  This guy did a really nice test with it using thermometers to see how much it would raise the temp starting with 30 degrees ambient temp in the wild.  







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_qLHGQwAXE

I've got one. It's almost made of poncho-y feeling material. It really is significantly warmer than the issue one, but not as soft. Kind of a plastic feel to it, but not so much to be unsnuggly.
Downside, it's too hot to use in the AFG/Bragg/Benning region from I'd say April-Sep. Anything warmer than 70F and you're going to have soggy balls in the patrol base.
In cold climates, it's the heat. Get it. See what I did there.

One of the least used sets of equipment in the US in my experiences with regular units was the Canteen Cup, and Canteen Cup stove.  When you get away from a connected log train with a steady flow of MRE's, it helps to be able to augment your meal plan with lightweight gear and supplies.  In foreign armies, we see a heavy reliance on tea or Chai, cooking at the individual level, and sustaining off the local population.

My unit in OIF was left out to dry several times, for extended periods of time, where the 1SG, XO, PSG, and normal supply chain totally dropped the ball and didn't seem to give a rip.  The 1SG even was the first one to take leave and come back to the States, while the rest of the unit was left in Baghdad.

In Reconnaissance units, we pretty much knew we were on our own anyway, so we packed and trained accordingly.  This included:

* Water resupply using filters, iodine tablets (yum), farmers' water pumps in foreign countries, or a resupply from our HQ element using vehicles, caches, or a link-up worst case

* Augmenting broken down MRE"s with granola bars, Snicker's, or other off the shelf bars with chocolate and peanuts, almonds, etc.  

* Soup mixes, warm beverage powders, and tea for cold weather

Using heat tabs or a sliver of C4, you can heat a canteen cup of water quickly, quietly, with a very low signature.  If you are using old school LC-1 canteen pouches, the stitching will often come off from the Type 8 nylon webbing where the ALICE clips are routed through, and you'll lose your canteen.  We always had to tie down any ALICE clip pouches with gutted 550, using square knot and 2 half hitches.  If you find yourselves in possession of this gear, keep that in mind.  Those of us that used it were happy to go to MOLLE pouches, where there is no way for that to happen.  I prefer totally enclosed canteen pouches with thin foam insulation between 2 layers of the Cordura.  Make sure your canteen pouches will fit the canteen with cup and stove all sleeved together.

Trioxane Heat Tabs



Some different stove and cup options




Canteen Cup and Stove Video

I ate the weight and carried two canteen cups.
One for hygiene and the other for cooking.

Ramen ftmfw.

This is another area where I really find added value in wearing Nomex gloves, since I can handle most hot items for a short time without getting burned, whether they be carbine forends, my canteen cup handles, or logs in a fire when just camping.

For Ramen noodles, I personally chose not to use them due to the high salt content, but you can mitigate that by how much of the seasoning pack you add.  For sustenance, it's better than nothing, is very lightweight, and compact.

What I've been really liking are the Knorr meals.






I keep one in an MRE bag, taped shut in my Camel Bak pouch as my Emergency Meal, and will cycle through it once a year, then replace it on campouts, shooting trips, etc.

If you leave them as-is in a rucksack flap, they will develop a hole in them, and seasoning will get everywhere, so I like the MRE bag durability the best to enclose them. You can use them as replacements for MRE's even, at a fraction of the weight.  Augment with meal replacement bars, and you're well into good caloric intake with substance.  For less weight, you can sustain yourself much longer than MRE's, and add more distance to your legs when traveling on foot.  Downside is cook time, but it goes fast.

I also keep a metal spoon in my custom SAW pouch in an elastic retainer, rather than mess with the plastic spoons, which have all broken on me.  Even the heavy duty versions at outdoor or sporting good stores break in extreme cold or repeated strain, so I defaulted to steel.

I have a titanium spork.

Here is where I keep my spoon and other items like chem lights, batteries, Camo compact, Schrade multi-tool pouch sewn to the outside, things like that.  I started making my own SAW pouches when I was in LRS, with padding and tarp lining on the inside.  I have a little camp stove with heat tabs in there I use on campouts.

The woobie/goretex combo is the best snivel system known to man.

I somehow missed this thread earlier. Thanks for bumping.

Kikkoman miso soup is good in cold weather.

ETA this is the stuff: Miso

That Kikkoman seems to ring a bell with me for some reason.  I think I had it in Japan.

Seriously though, you can cut way down on the weight of your meal load by using the ProBar meal replacements, compact packaged soups and mixes, augmented with nuts and trail mixes.

Thanks for all the contributions guys.  I appreciate the thread being free from noise.  I'm actually back looking for more canteen cups and stoves, since mine are staged overseas.  I need something Stateside since I am a Scout Master with BSA, and we campout with the Troop at least once per month.

It's been a fun thread.

Around Bragg, I prepack my own meals in 1 gallon ziplock freezer bags. They go something like this:
1 quart ziplock freezer bag 1:1:1 cashews/raisin/m&m mix
1 can grizzly straight
1 can monster rehab
2 MetRx colossal pretzel protein bars
2 peanut butter Cliff Bars
1 can of sliced pineapple (the little bastards with four slices. yum)
1 pack of PB crackers
1 single serving pack of tuna
1 single serving pack of spam

I've gone 9 days on that. I usually pull most of the monsters out if I'm jumping in. Gotta save one or two, though. I refuse to eat MREs if I don't have to.

Nijmegen. Fond memories.

I did 3 months on MREs in Bosnia.
Never again.

I don't eat a single one my last trip to afghanistan.  I was plenty hungry, though at times.

#realgruntlifeshitrightthere

Living on MREs for 5 months sucks. I still have to eat them, sometimes, but I do everything in my power to avoid doing so. Sometimes that means not eating for a day.

It was absolutely amazing, I highly recommend doing the .mil individual category. I was feeling pretty broken after the first day, but by the next morning I was ready to go. Some Norwegian Soldiers showed me the ropes on the final day and I had a great time with them.

It was also very unique as the shoot down of MH17 occurred the evening of day 3.

Hey guys, I have been getting in to some longer hikes and hiking with weight, between 25 and 75 lbs depending on the training day. I just completed a 26 hour ruck challenge here in AZ and the Merrel boots I was wearing left blisters all over the bottoms of my feet, between my toes and left my feet basically feeling like crap. It was interesting because not one of my training rucks did this to my feet and I trained in these same boots for months prior to the event.

Do you have any suggestions for different footwear?

Oh and by the way I tried my best to take care of my lil footsies with foot powder and Darn Tough wool socks like was suggested here, even applied vaseline prior to the event but there was almost no time to maintain care of my feet once we got going.

Thanks for the thread OP and everyone who contributes, there is a ton of great info in here.

P.S. The Pro Bars rocked!

Sometimes it just comes down to your body being used to it. We can talk tips and tricks all day long but in the end, the only way to get good at rucking is to go ruck. Body hardening is a real thing. 26hrs under a ruck is a long time and if all you had were some blisters, I'd say you're doing ok.

If you are talking about the Heavy Duty LP (leather protectant).... that shit is the bomb. I love it. Smells pretty good too.



I apply it a little generously, then stick the boots in the oven on low heat, or use a hair dryer to get it to melt down into the pores, cracks, and crannies of the leather.



I also use it on my gun belt on rare occasion, as I don't want to soften the leather much. And any leather pouches, cases, etc, that need a little TLC.
 

Ugh, I avoid them like the plague until absolutely necessary. The first strike ones are even worse. Afghanistan was hell on our bowels.

Any ting you wan

Sounds good to me, just wasn't sure if there was anything else I could do. Thank you.

One thing nice about rucking is your body quickly adapts, if it doesn't fall apart.

3 months of decent training and you can do a lot with 55 pounds on your back.

Beyond that, you have to invest more time for incremental gains.

It is surprising how quickly you get used to carrying the weight. When I arrived in Vietnam I had never carried anything more than a day pack. I was 25 pounds over weight but within a week I had lost all the excess and was able to hump with the best of them. I think my ruck weighed about 100 pounds but never actually weighed it. I also carried 30 pounds of ammo. I was paranoid about running out.

I have flat feet. So before I went to the field I went to the hospital in Chu Lai and had a custom set of arch supports made. The issued jungle boots worked very well for me. I never got a blister. In fact I don't remember ever having a blister on me feet. I carried 3 pair of issue socks and changed them at every opportunity. They were never dry. My feet didn't dry out until I left the field.

The only problem I had related to my feet was that when climbing mountains the tendon up the front of my shins would burn like it was on fire.

We were only resupplied once per week. We were required to carry 10 days C rats which is quite heavy. I once went 39 days without a shower or a change of clothes. "A" company stayed in the field 4 to 6 weeks at a time.


There is so much variation in feet I don't know how boots can be made that fit more than 1 foot. Example, my poor wife has never had a pair of shoes that didn't hurt her feet.

Tell me more about how you have that sling attached.

It is just wrapped aroung the handguard so that it hangs from my shoullder pointing forward at a level where I carry my right hand.

Neat. I haven't seen pictures of anyone slinging a rifle like that, that far back.

Thank you for your service!

Maybe I was ahead of my time.

I was quite good at shooting from the hip back then and I could get it into action very quickly.

Sometimes you just gotta sling lead in the general direction and figure out the rest later.

Maximum violence in the shortest time.

I like the cut of your jib, Sir!

Get in the gym and start dead lifting and squatting, eat a lot.

It never gets said enough. Thank you guys for your service in Vietnam

 

mech4matsnova


Are you "Confederates in the Attic" hard core?

Shelter:

We each carried a pancho as LRRPF described. 2 guys would snap thiers together to make a tent. Poles were cut from the jungle while clearing fields of fire. We all slept on air mattresses that you would blow up with you mouth after humping the bush for a whole day. Would make you high. I had several air mattresses ruined by small shrapnel but I always got a new one on the resupply chopper at the end of the week.

Water:

Water was always available all you had to do was pick it up. Sometimes it had feces floating on it but you could keep it from making lumps in your canteen. Then put in 6 iodine tablets and wait 30 minutes. If you were lucky you had some flavor of Kool Aid to kill the bad taste.

Food:

C rations are not at all like modern rations. C's are concentrated and digest with little waste. Consequently we didn't go much. I usually only went every 5 to 7 days. Some guys would get blockages. I guess that is a good thing because the toilet paper in C's is lousy. I only had diarhea once in my entire tour.

Sorry about turning this into a poop thread.

You should try the Belleville 990 Hot Weather Combat Hiking boots that were issued for Afghanistan.

I bought mine 27 months ago, and have been wearing them almost every day for 10-16 hours per day.

I wear them to work in, walk the dog every day, and on weekend hiking trips and they are by far the most comfortable boots I have ever owned.

They are great at wicking moisture and letting heat escape.

They are worth every cent of the $200 retail price, but if you check the military surplus stores, you may find a gently used pair for under $100.

Belleville 990

I never used those Bellvilles.  I'm looking at Solomon's right now, but I really prefer flat-bottom soles with no break between the heel and the ball of the foot.  Here's an interesting video.  I tried out the Solomon's, and they have a lot of natural forward spring built into the boot, which feels like a mechanical advantage for covering distance.



Best Men's Hiking Boots

There's a LOT of good info in here.

I had a large Alice pack (issued medium, no frame) with frame.  I carried two 2Q canteens on it, held down with one of the GP straps.

Inside I had a large waterproof bag, the three outer pockets had small waterproof bags in them.

One outside pocket had my hard plastic 'first aid kit' (the old green plastic one) that I kept all my shaving and toiletries in (razor, toothbrush, minor first aid like bandaids, extra plastic baggies, etc.
Another outside pocket had my stripped down MREs in it along with as many heaters (when they were available) as I could fit.
The last outside pocket held extra batteries and sundries.

Inside I had my cho liner, my ponchos (the old rubberized green one and a pair of camo ones, since they compressed much better) in their stuff sack with bungee cords already attached.
I had extra socks in a plastic bag with dessicant pack inside, sock ratio was 1-2 x day plus 1-3 extra.   Extra foot powder was usually in this bag as well.

I carried 2-3 extra tshirts in a ziplock bag (I did not wear underwear in the field).

I had my rifle/pistol cleaning kit either inside or attached to the outside.  I had the one that had the ALICE clip on it with a 203 bore brush inside.  If it was outside it was attached next to the 2Q on one side and held down with the GP strap.

I usually had a small but thick book to read in there somewhere...  in a ziplock.   EVERYTHING was in a ziplock or issued waterproof bag.

I had a cut down ground mat that went through the straps on top of the ruck tied to the straps so it wouldn't go walkabout.

All the rest of space was given over to extra ammo for the 203, the MG, and radio batteries (claymores too).

Boot wise I only wore jungles with green wool socks and good inserts (not custom orthotics, but the best off the shelf I could find, and I'd usually buy new ones after a long field problem/FTX).
I had three pairs of jungles, all broken in by the wonderful road marching we'd do.  I used the "soak and let dry on your feet while marching" routine explained earlier to get them fitted right.

In the winter I wore the leather issue boots with an extra pair of socks (later I bought merino hiking socks which were the bomb).

We never wore the field jacket, in cold weather where we weren't moving a lot we wore field jacket liners under our BDU tops.   When we got goretex outerwear we wore that if it was raining although we found out quickly that goretex has a limit to what it will repel in heavy rain and folks sourced the old rubberized stuff for heavy rain days.

We carried the old LBE, 4 mag pouches with two canteens (and both canteens had cups - as has been said, one for cooking, one for shaving/boiling water/etc), butt pack modded with fastex clips, bayonet/holster, and first aid pouch/compass pouch on the belt in the front (although they'd get moved out when possible).
We all had the LBE extender buckle things for when we were in heavy clothing, I kept mine clipped around the belt somewhere for easy access.

Later we went to the LBV but all that did was put the mags up on our chest instead of by our waist and add another layer of nylon.

Smart folks kept their personal ID, cash, etc in a ziplock back in their upper left BDU pocket.   We all carried water filters of some kind.  I had a ceramic filter that cost me an arm and a leg but I never got sick from stream water.

Oh, toilet paper.  I carried two rolls squished into a square, in separate ziplock bags.   One was in the sundries pocket on the outer ruck and one was stuffed in the ruck itself.
I carried a some in my buttpack as well.   TP is king in the field.

Finally, smokes/dip...  usually 3-5 packs of smokes and 2-4 cans of dip.    After I quit, I'd carry some to sell to folks/give to people as favors.

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

/former 11B guy

Were you in Panama by any chance?

I was in for the 1989 festivities but didn't go.  I have several friends who jumped in (82nd and 75th) and have their mustard stains on their wings, though.