by Max Velocity
One of the other lesser known advantages of wearing a belt with full pouches/harness is that your patrol pack/ruck will rest on top of your rear utility pouches and support the weight. It’s a good set-up, something more old school from before the days of the modern systems with full body armor/PCs.
The ruck debate:
It is true that ‘patrol packs’ have gained a life of their own. Such patrol packs are often now ‘mini-rucks’ and are bulky or have frames that mean they can only be used on their own. That is ideal for vehicle mounted operations where you are patrolling from vehicles or you are doing nothing more than perhaps three days patrols from a firm base, like a FOB. The problem with that is that you can’t do anything with such a patrol pack, it’s too unwieldy and it is all you can carry.
If you are doing light infantry operations you will need a ruck. What type of ruck is up to you. I have used versions with both internal and external frames. Remember that if you are not fully utilizing a ruck, you can tighten it down to remove volume. I like the large ALICE pack and versions, and other types I have used in the past. The key thing is that to conduct any extended operations you need a ruck. Just like a hiker needs a ruck. If you are hiking the Appalachian Trail, you take a ruck. Granted, you may either be on one extreme a super-light hiker or on the other one of those with canteens swinging off the pack, but you still take a ruck. BTW, don’t have things swinging off your ruck, and if you are infanteering, and not just hiking, then super light is pretty much out once you have ammo, batteries, night vision, rations etc…
So that leads us to the trick: even if you are out in the woods infanteering, you will not always want to carry your ruck. You may want to leave it in a patrol base, or cache it at an ORP (Objective Rally Point) before going in and doing what you have to do. So you still want the ability, from some base in the woods, to have a patrol pack. The trick is to have a softer smaller patrol pack, maybe of a 30 liter type size. One without a frame. In this ruck you pack what is essential equipment going into the objective, but it is also an emergency ‘grab bag’ for if you have to bug out and leave your ruck. So you want the essential stuff that will not go on your battle belt/tactical vest/PC to be in this patrol pack. This pack is then an extension of your basic load, and it should contain things like night vision gear, batteries, more spare ammo, medical gear, basic snivel gear (freeze at night), and basic spare rations. You want to be able to be effective (not desperate) with your patrol pack for about three days at a time, if you have to go on an extended patrol with just that pack and your basic load.
What you do it this: you don’t ever unpack the patrol pack to pack it away and roll it up in the ruck. When carrying your full load with ruck, you put the patrol pack on the ruck. You either put it under the lid of the ruck, or strap it on top. You can then grab it in a hurry if you have to leave your ruck, or go on patrol, or whatever.
So remember, with this load, you are not really travelling light. You will still be freezing at night, because you can’t fit in more snivel gear, but you need your combat load, night vision, basic rations, spare socks and foot powder etc. Don’t try and carry too much water if it is freely available – have a system such as iodine tablets, whatever, to purify it. Carry basic rations, even one MRE per day, to get you through it.
Even with the patrol pack you should try and fit in some shelter/warm gear. You can carry your poncho/tarp so you can put up shelter, and you can also carry the military poncho liner (‘woobie’) to wrap around yourself. Given the discussion about the ‘thermal poncho’, as a resistance fighter you should have one and have it with you on the outside of your patrol pack at all times and that will suffice as shelter as well as cover from thermal surveillance. Rather than a straight up poncho liner, you can have someone sew in a zipper to the folded liner that turns it into a lightweight sleeping bag. Or you can just take a jungle style lightweight sleeping bag cinched down in a stuff-sack and be done with it. There are lots of options and the ‘big army issue’ option is not always best.
If you are out with just your patrol pack and you need to sleep, you have the option of putting up your poncho/’thermal poncho’ for shelter and getting in whatever poncho liner or lightweight sleeping bag you brought. You won’t have a thermal mat so you can either use vegetation or mostly you can just get your upper body up on a mix of your patrol pack and maybe even your battle belt to insulate yourself from the ground.
I’m not going to get into specific weight and what you should or should not carry but the bottom line is that if you are moving with your team out on patrol with full combat load including rucks it is not a light affair. You may be carrying 100 lb. to sustain yourselves with ammunition, rations, sleeping gear, water, ancillary equipment etc. It is a plod, a slow hike. You will move into the area of your operations and establish a patrol base, then conduct operations from there until it is time to move on or go get resupply etc. But just because you have to carry the weight does not mean you are immobile. You just have to be fit and keep walking and you can cover a lot of miles.
Living in the field:
Short term operations with just your patrol pack can be considered maybe a 72 hour thing and you will expect to be uncomfortable. Living out of your ruck you should not be. You should be packing shelter, sleeping gear and rations appropriate to the season/location. “Any fool can be uncomfortable.” When ‘growing up’ in the British Army being good at living in the field was essential because the weather is often that worst combination of wet windy cold that will chill you to the bone and bring on hypothermia rapidly. You have to get the right gear and be on top of your game to remain effective.
Remember that when packing your ruck you need to keep the weight high and try not to concentrate it in one place – a rookie ruck march mistake is to use a very heavy object to make up weight which makes the pack very unwieldy.
You will need a therma-rest/thermal roll mat to sleep on and prevent your heat being sucked into the cold ground. You then need a sleeping bag appropriate to the season inside a Gore-Tex bivvy bag to keep it dry. Don’t use the stuff sack for the sleeping system – just leave the sleeping bag inside the bivvy bag and stuff the whole thing at the bottom of your ruck. It can then go in and out easily when you come off/go on sentry duty. Remember that when going on sentry duty or whenever not sleeping in your bag your gear is always put away and ready to go. You don’t leave it all nicely laid out under your poncho. You also need all gear in the ruck to be packed in water proof bags. Canoe style bags are ideal, so even if you have to do a river crossing your gear will float and stay dry.
Poncho: I am always surprised at when I hear about how people sleep and how they are amazed by techniques that I consider basic, simply because they were necessary to me. Whenever you stop to sleep, during the hours of darkness, you put up your poncho. It might not be raining now, but it will be later. This is a tarp, but often ponchos are used as tarps, hence the name. Another name is ‘basha’. This is not the same as the ‘thermal poncho’ that I have discussed at length – but the idea for that came from this technique. If it is raining badly during the day, then put up your poncho, but always keep it low to the ground so it is not seen easily.
Usually a basha is put up to sleep a buddy pair, in a designated position along a perimeter, sometimes over a ‘shell scrape’ shallow trench to get the pair below ground. Have either paracord or even better bungee cords permanently affixed to the corners and the side eyelet grommets on the poncho and put it up like a tarp. Make sure it does not sag in the center and therefore collect water. I will work on some photos of examples, but you can put one side to the ground, or have it like a tent, or any number of configurations. If you lack ideal trees, then use cut tent poles with tent pegs to get the basha put up.
In terms of routine, before you go to sleep you need to powder your feet and change your socks. You will then put your boots back on and tie them loosely, before getting in your bag. You may wear some sort of TEVA style sandal that you could wear to
fight in an emergency. You will only have limited resupplies of socks so wear them for a day, swap them, then switch feet, then turn them inside out, then back again. The wet ones you take off can go in your armpits to dry while you sleep, or hung up if it is hot. Make sure you look after your feet!
If you are in a wet or humid environment then you may want to consider a wet kit/dry kit routine. This is most common in the jungle - before getting in your bag, put on dry clothes, change into the wet ones in the morning. Remain dry when pulling sentry duty. Even if you are not changing your pants, make sure you change out any wet inner garments like t-shirts. And don’t wear cotton t-shirts (unless you face a likely fire threat, like vehicle crews do) because they will chill you when they get wet. The other thing to remember is to strip down when you get in your bag to your basic uniform. If you wear your warm gear /snivel gear it will lose its effectiveness. Put the warm gear back on when you get out of your bag, for something like sentry duty. Whatever you do, don’t wear your rain /Gore-Tex gear in your bag; you may actually go hypothermic if you get in there fully wet and cold.
Notice how I keep mentioning sentry duty? Yes, you will learn to love it. On that note, if you are compromised and attacked in your patrol base, you will need to bug out. The drill is to return fire in your buddy pairs and then one guy packs the gear away (just the sleeping system and tarp should be out) while the other covers; when they are ready, they put their rucks on and peel out with the squad. Of course, if the contact gets heavy, you just grab your patrol packs/grab bags and fight out.
Cooking: you may want to heat up food or even heat water for a coffee. MREs are great with the heater they come with, but you may not have them so many months/years into the fight. The British Army issues the foldable sold fuel (hexamine) cookers which are ideal to use with either mess tins or metal mugs. You place the mug on the cooker with something like a boil-in-the-bag ration in water in the mug. Once the water heats the ration you can make a hot drink with the water in the mug. Awesome.
But you will not be having open fires and you will be using light-discipline; only small red penlights, if at all. Therefore if you are going to cook you need to do it on these stoves during daylight and you dig the stove into a little hole so the flickering flames can’t be seen. Enemy proximity is obviously a judgment call with this! If you don’t have access to resupply of items such as the sold fuel hexamine blocks, then a good solution would be to carry those small rocket stoves that will burn twigs, so you can dig them in and at least do some cooking. Remember that you may have to boil rice or something similar once the conveniences of modern rations have run out.
Alternate sleeping arrangements:
The types of sleeping arrangements I have described so far are designed for temperate environments, out in the woods, where you can sleep on the ground. Urban and jungle type environments may need different arrangements.
Jungle: you will always want to avoid sleeping on the ground. Either because it is swamp/wet or crawling with insects and crawlies. You will only sleep on the ground for short term exigencies such as an LUP (lie Up Position) perhaps an ORP before an attack or an Observation Post (OP) or similar. You will try and keep off the ground. To do so you can cut wood and build something like an A-Frame basha or a simple platform above the ground or you can use a hammock. With the hammock you put it up between trees then you put a poncho/tarp over the top and drape a bug net down over the hammock. You climb inside and go to sleep, not forgetting to put your dry clothes and TEVA sandals on.
Which reminds me: you have the option, when operating where you may sleep on the ground or use a tarp, of using a ‘hoop bivvy’ or small lightweight tent system. This encloses you and keeps the bugs away while, giving you room to administrate yourself. But of course it is slower to get out of in a hurry. If you are really worried about bugs and snakes on the ground a small tent or hoop bivvy may be the thing for you. You have to remember that if it is raining, the only way to get out of the rain to do any administration of yourself is to put up shelter, whether that is a tarp, bivvy or a tent. If you are just in a bivvy bag there is nothing you can do except cower in there away from the rain.
Urban: you will likely be in buildings. There may even be furniture. A practice from Afghanistan is to use the military style cot beds for any kind of long term patrol base. You get issued really neat hoop mosquito net systems that will sit on these cot beds. You just climb in and zip them up and it keeps the nasties away.
Hygiene in the field:
There is a difference between subsisting long term in the field in some sort of constructed base or FOB and conducting light infantry operations in the woods. To do the former, you will consider all sorts of improvements to sanitation, hygiene, cooking, shelter and such. The point of the 'living in the field' article is to look at a small light infantry team conducting operations based out of their rucks from patrol bases or similar They are self-sufficient from their rucks for however long with the caveat that they will have to consider resupply of some sort before they run out of supplies.
I have mentioned basics such as changing socks and clothing, and wet/dry routines. You will not be able to wash or clean any of your gear in the field so it is unavoidable that you will be smelly and dirty. That is not a sanitation problem it is just what infantrymen do. You may dry and change your socks out, but they will still stink once you have run through all your spares. You can still bring in wet wipes or other such products and 'hit the hot spots' before putting that smelly clothing back on, and you should do so. As part of the routine for changing your socks and powdering your feet also consider dusting your groin area after using a towel to dry off any sweat and after using any wet wipes that you may have. It will help keep you clean and prevent fungus and chapped thighs that may start to infect you if you live out there for a while.
Make sure you have a basic first aid kit with some antiseptic /antibiotic cream in case of any small cuts and grazes. You should treat them and cover them as appropriate - particularly if you are in a jungle or swamp type environment where any cuts have the potential to become infected and can knock you out of the fight. Be careful with this.
Now that you have accepted that you will sweat and stink of BO, and have kept that in mind for when you meet any civilians as part of your operations, consider the following:
Hand sanitizer: carry it with you and use it after going potty and before doing any eating or food preparation.
Latrines:
For No.2's: you will dig short term latrines at your patrol base, using an e-tool that will be a small pit. The latrine should be under the protection of a sentry. It is usual to dig two - one just outside or on the perimeter under the watchful gaze of the sentry position for daytime use; another central to the patrol base for night use. It’s just a hole, and once you have done your business just drop some soil over it to reduce smell and flies. It’s only a short term thing that will be filled in when you move on.
For No. 1's: you should also use the same latrine pits. You could designate a tree if you wanted, but what you don't want is everyone pissing haphazardly around the patrol base, which they will do if left unsupervised.
Trash:
You pack out what you pack in. This includes all food packaging. If you have food tins, then open them at both ends and crush them. If you had to for some reason, you could always bury trash, but you are leaving evidence behind. Have a trash bag in your ruck. Whatever you do, don't leave the site of the patrol base littered with empty food containers and ration bags.
Bugs:
Ensure you have sufficient bug-repellent and also sun screen if appropriate. You don't want to become a casualty due to bug bites or sunburn. You can prevent sunburn by the wearing of appropriate clothing and wide brim patrol hats. As part of your hygiene routine of 'hitting the hot spots' you should also incorporate a tick check because you don't want to let any ticks stay on you and thus contract Lyme disease, which will really mess you up if you are fighting a Resistance campai
gn. Blousing your pants and putting bug repellent around the tops of your boots will help with this. Some soldiers use flea/tick collars and I can't comment if this is actually safe or not but it’s widely used in the Army - someone will tell me that is also a dangerous thing to do!
So really hygiene in the field when out on patrol operations is a case of basic sanitation for bodily functions and keeping as clean as you can while restricted to whatever dirty sweaty clothing you have with you on your body and in your ruck. Don't worry about this. Don't try and pack in multiple sets of clothing; have a few undergarments like socks, underwear and t-shirts to change, but your pants/shirts will just get dirty and you can live with it.
And a post-script on military doctrine:
[In this manual] I have tried hard to translate my various training and operational experience into something that will be useful to readers. I have deliberately not trotted out US Military doctrine as an answer to what readers need to know tactically. Personally I think that the 'Big Army' is hamstrung by a bureaucratic quagmire and much of what passes for doctrine is just not that helpful. Endless 'tasks, conditions and standards' so that when I have been asked to utilize my experiences and run training I have had to massage the training schedule to ensure that I can train what is needed, not what is mandated by the endless and numerous 'tasks, conditions and standards'.
I don't really believe that trotting out military style doctrine is what is needed here. Translating training and experiences into usable information and training for guys who will be on the ground doing it is. Churning out the Ranger Handbook or FM blah blah is not what is needed. It will also be over complicated and will not make sense to whoever you are trying to train.