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Old 09-30-2011, 02:52 PM
perardua perardua is offline
In your own time, go on...
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 136
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Could give you a list of what I carried in Afghanistan in 2009, bearing in mind I did mostly vehicle mounted patrols, and that I can't be arsed going into quite such ridiculous detail.

Worn: Desert DPM combat trousers, Desert DPM Under Body Armour Combat Shirt (UBACS), Desert socks, Lowa desert boots (can't remember the specific model, but they were whatever the issue pair is), ID discs, ID card in holder round neck, wristwatch, antimicrobial underwear, Mk6A helmet with desert DPM cover (elastic scrim loops removed to prevent catching on interiors of vehicles, and because I was hardly going to somehow stick sand under them) and night vision mount, Mockingbird IR marker, ballistic eye protection (goggles on top cover, glasses on patrol), gloves, kneepad on right knee, Osprey body armour.

Carried in pockets: Left trouser map pocket containing 2x field dressing, 2x morphine combopen, 1x CAT tourniquet, 1x IR cyalume and 1x red cyalume; right trouser map pocket containing mine kit, notebook, Operation Herrick Aide Memoire, crib cards, range card, pen, pencils, lightweight compass. Rifle combitool, oil bottle and pull through in UBACS arm pocket

Carried on Osprey: Six 30-round magazines for L85A2, six 40mm HEDP rounds for UGL, smoke grenade, mine prod, bayonet, personal role radio (PRR), Gerber multi-tool and camelbak.

Carried in daysack: Softie jacket, waterproof jacket, foot powder, soft hat, spare socks, spare underwear, spare water bottles, 24-hour ration pack, spare batteries, head-mounted night vision system, common weapon sight (night sight for rifle), remainder of weapon cleaning kit for rifle and UGL, 16 40mm HEDP rounds for UGL, bandoleer of 150 additional 5.56mm ammo on 10-round stripper clips for refilling rifle magazines, magazine speed charger, plus sleeping system, additional 7.62mm link, etc when required by the task (we rarely did long foot patrols so we cached most of our kit with the vehicles).

Carried in bergen with desert DPM cover (almost always strapped to the side of the wagon): lots of spare socks, lots of spare underwear, 2 spare T-shirts (if and when the patrol harboured up for the night simply removing the UBACS I'd worn all day, having a quick wet wipe and putting on a clean T-shirt felt awesome. Change back into the UBACS in the morning, as it was only going to get soaked in sweat again), 1 spare UBACS, 1 spare pair of trousers, entrenching tool, flip-flops, spare pair of desert boots, huge pack of wet-wipes, washing/shaving kit (not that we shaved out on the ground), spare water (emergencies only, the main supply was in the wagons), lightweight sleeping bag, bivvy bag, desert DPM shelter sheet, softie trousers, more spare batteries, inflatable sleeping mat.

Weapons: L85A2 with 40mm underslung grenade launcher (UGL), LLLM (combination IR/visible laser and IR/visible torch) and SUSAT, assigned pistol (Sig Sauer P226) issued with one 15-round magazine generally left it in the armoury as an extra embuggerance of negligible use in most situations I was going to find myself in.

That was two years ago though, and British kit has been through several upgrades since then, so much of the details will have changed (new MTP uniforms, new helmets, new Osprey version, Elcan Spectre weapon sights, new flash hiders, new rifle magazines, etc).

Also worth a look would be this post on Arrsepedia: http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/The_Basics which is much probably better suited to T2K style warfare and is slightly outdated in terms of references to LSWs, etc.
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