US Army Combat Medic loadout

[HorseSoldier]

Of course, I get back to my reserve unit and find that in the year I've been gone it's become full of new recruits, and as a result has reverted to strict packing lists and kit checks before every exercise. Furthermore, because my face is no longer known, I'm treated like one of those recruits by the newer members of the training staff. Annoying.

That is, of course, the problem. New Joes fresh out of basic training rarely have much of a clue as to what they need to go to the field, much less into combat. It takes good NCOs (and good troops) to get that sorted out to the point where you can trust the troops to do their own thing. The packing list is the path of less resistance, however much of a headache it is to have a room full of junior enlisted guys playing "show me a canteen cup."

[perardua]

I agree, I just have fond memories of the days when it was only applied to the new people, not everyone.

[pmulcahy11b]

Of course, I get back to my reserve unit and find that in the year I've been gone it's become full of new recruits, and as a result has reverted to strict packing lists and kit checks before every exercise. Furthermore, because my face is no longer known, I'm treated like one of those recruits by the newer members of the training staff. Annoying.

I'm reminded of that scene early in Platoon where SGT Elias is checking out his new guys before they go on a patrol. He's looking at them, saying, "Shitcan this, don't need that, get rid of this..." etc. Most of the basic field issue for troops (don't know what they call it these days, but we called it TA-50) consists of "snivel gear" that you just don't need for most operations and is best left back at the camp. Unless you're on a road march for training, you pretty much left most of it behind for most of your work, and supplemented what you did carry with some small but useful items.

[Eddie]

It takes good NCOs (and good troops) to get that sorted out to the point where you can trust the troops to do their own thing.

SF and CAG doesn't even do this. The packing list and the PCC/PCI layouts are a leader's best friend. Now what with SF and CAG being such a small percentage of the US Army (and equivalents in foreign militaries), an old adage that my Platoon Sergeant told me when I took command of my first platoon was, "Sir, anything you or I don't check, Joe forgot. Joe will f*ck us if we let him."

At first I was kinda upset at the lack of trust and the misunderstanding about who "us" was, but the first time I trusted Joe to play by big boy rules, it bit my platoon in the ass when we needed some BII for one of our 240s.

I don't know...maybe it's my background from my first unit, but I'm a firm believer in carrying everything on the packing list to the ORP and dropping rucks before you begin your assault.

[Eddie]

I'm reminded of that scene early in Platoon where SGT Elias is checking out his new guys before they go on a patrol. He's looking at them, saying, "Shitcan this, don't need that, get rid of this..." etc. Most of the basic field issue for troops (don't know what they call it these days, but we called it TA-50) consists of "snivel gear" that you just don't need for most operations and is best left back at the camp. Unless you're on a road march for training, you pretty much left most of it behind for most of your work, and supplemented what you did carry with some small but useful items.

Which could have all been avoided by the issuance of a packing list.

Instead, the movie tried to make an effective point instead of making Elias an effective leader.

And it's still called TA-50.

[perardua]

I wonder if my feelings are affected by the culture of my reserve unit when I first arrived. It was small, most of the members had been on multiple operations before, and due to the nature of the reserves in the UK at the time, nobody turned up if they didn't want to. The guys who were regularly attending training were well motivated and often older and more mature than their regular counterparts, hence the feeling that we could be trusted to square our own shit away.

Went on ops with a regular unit, and they also didn't see the need for a formal packing list. There were some items you had to have, but everything else was mission specific and worked on the theory that all you should have in your webbing/on your Osprey is ammo and water. As for daysacks, in vehicles they were set up as grab bags if you had to bail in a hurry, but on foot patrols you cut down your personal gear to fit into one of the side pouches, and the rest of the daysack was for Section/Flight ammo and kit. Of course, some of that may have been affected by the fact I was on mortars and thus we potentially had to carry a lot more crap than everyone else, hence we were pretty brutal with binning stuff off when required. That, and mortars tended to have the older and more mature guys on the squadron.

Came back to my unit, and, as mentioned, it had suddenly gone from 25% manned to 100%, and most of the new manpower did need some handholding compared to the old bunch. As a result, we turned to relying on the PAM for packing lists, and now I have webbing with far too much stuff in it that should be in my daysack or bergen, and bergens that are a good weight for road marches, but not at all representative of what is carried on ops.

[headquarters]

Terminology

SF and CAG doesn't even do this. The packing list and the PCC/PCI layouts are a leader's best friend. Now what with SF and CAG being such a small percentage of the US Army (and equivalents in foreign militaries), an old adage that my Platoon Sergeant told me when I took command of my first platoon was, "Sir, anything you or I don't check, Joe forgot. Joe will f*ck us if we let him."

At first I was kinda upset at the lack of trust and the misunderstanding about who "us" was, but the first time I trusted Joe to play by big boy rules, it bit my platoon in the ass when we needed some BII for one of our 240s.

I don't know...maybe it's my background from my first unit, but I'm a firm believer in carrying everything on the packing list to the ORP and dropping rucks before you begin your assault.

We have a saying in our forces ( NCO level and up ) :
"trust is good.control is better " .
Meaning that your job is to make sure the rest does theirs in all its details .

Also we dont say " Joe " with us its either "Ola Dunk " or " Johnny".

"I need the supplies moved over there "
"take 3 Johnnies and get it done "
hehe.

[Eddie]

My saying, and I admit I stole it from some unremembered source is, "Trust, but verify."

[perardua]

I've heard that saying. I suspect it ultimately depends on your unit, your relationship with your troops, and your tasking.

In the case of mortars when I was with them, we were at one point maintaining an 8 man overt OP, an on-camp mortar line and a constant patrolling presence with 28 or so men, not including R&R, sickness, etc. That meant that A) our NCOs were extremely busy (our officer spent most of the tour on compassionate leave), and B) we all had to be ready to step into someone else's place at a moments notice. It was not unusual for people to come off the helicopter from the OP after 8 days and be told that they were on a patrol that was leaving in 5 minutes, which left little time for kit checks.

In those circumstances, we never had anyone lacking vital kit, the only kit checks we conducted were to ensure we had all our sensitive items once a month.

Of course, if we were doing deliberate ops such as arrests or assaults, we would do kit checks and all that good stuff. But even then, it wouldn't be the case of being given a specific packing list, more a case of carry what you know you need, and Section/Flight kit will be spread out amongst you as necessary.

[Eddie]

There is always time for the TLPs. And an OP is a combat mission in and of itself. You haven't had a chance to download mission-essential items from stepping off of that bird. Maybe you have to put stuff back on and readjust, but you haven't turned anything in yet.

Quite honestly, I know that I couldn't operate the way you're describing. I don't know if it's something unique to your unit, or if it's a Brit Army-wide practice, but if one of my PLs was running his PLT that way, I'd have his ass standing before the BC recommending a job on the staff.

Nothing sucks worse than to seize an OBJ, capture the HVI, and then have your RTO tell you that the batteries in the camera are dead, no pictures for the prosecutors this time. That happened to one of my peers during my deployment. Any leader that doesn't check that stuff out is not doing his job.

[perardua]

Equally, our leadership felt that we were fine as we were. I can't speak as to other units, but we never had an incident of essential kit being forgotten, or lack of spares.

Obviously we have had different experiences with different military cultures, and how you lead your unit is entirely up to you. Our leadership chose to treat us as professionals, and it paid off for them. Maybe if we had different leaders, or if the personalities on the Flight were different, then we also would have enforced packing lists rigourously.

Different strokes for different folks, and all that.

[jester]

DAMN!

I am so glad I am out and from what I hear glad they denied me when I tried to get back in, sorry if this seems like a slap, but especialy the army.

It sounds like there is little is any leadership, and thus everything is micromanaged. And that sort of system does not develope leaders. It developes bureaucrats, which is the enviroment that was allowed to develope durring the 90s so the senior level zeros and ncos of today were learning their craft then, and poof here we are.

In my take, its part of uniformity. Everyone knows their duties, and knows the kit they are required to have for said duties. Poof enough said, done. A man is supposed to have the items he needs to handle his tasks. Part of SOPs and such.

In the olden days it was the NCOs and even non rate team leaders to ensure their men had what they needed to handle their mission, and that is what we did. All were deemed capable of doing their jobs and expected to do them, if they didn't preform well they found a place for them in supply or the mess hall counting, inventoring or something else that needed to be done but required no knowledge, skill or initiative where a screw up couldn't result in casualties or degraded mission.

The junior NCOs did their jobs, they were treated as adults and became leaders. The Platoon Sgt simply checked with the squad and team leaders who would give the thumbs up, or alert any issues, and the Pltaoon Sgt would handle it or refer it to the platoon comander (seldom was this done, things got handled "inhouse" at usualy the squad level.)

Thus, our leadership became excperienced, we became professionals and considered ourselves such, the officers and seniopr NCOs left us alone and they did their own jobs and not ours (unless new Lts showed up who seemed to want to do everyones job which we had to show them we knew our shit and they didn't so we would expose them at every chance when they messed up. After a while they would learn and back off.) In the end, we did run like the proverbial machine, trust of the enlsited was developed by the officers and we developed trust in them <or made them look like utter fools and they would disapear to supply or the motorpool> and we all could focus on our jobs and mission and have much less stress for all invovled.

One thing, and again this is from my time back in the stone age and now sitting on the sidelines, but, isn't leadership "inastilled!" I do not mean through classes or reciting codes and creeds or being sent to a school or course. For us, you already had to be a leader to go to those things. It sounds like the leaders are just laying down on the job, and I mean the small unit leaders, or has it become such a climate where "that is the way it is." Because the system has been doing that for so long, where the officers don't let the men and junior leadership do what they are supposed to do.

Remember, trust is needed because you are going to have to trust everyone in your team with your life! So, they need to be trusted to do their most basic of tasks and that is pack their own gear and what is needed to accomplish the mission!

Lists are needed, but not down to how many needles in your sewing kit. And yes for the REAL items for those who slack, they pay the penalty, replaced, grab an e-tool to make a full sized mock up of a trenchline or every example of a fixed defesnsive position in the manual for a company. "Oh you left that behind again! Well remember the full sized examples you dug last time Well, now you get to crawl under the barracks and dig them there!"

How can troops learn to be good NCOs if they aren't allowed to do their jobs


Sadly, I am told this is similiar with junior officers as well.

[jester]

My saying, and I admit I stole it from some unremembered source is, "Trust, but verify."

President Ronald Wilson Reagan said it in a speech nuclear limitation talks with Gorbachev.

[Eddie]

Equally, our leadership felt that we were fine as we were. I can't speak as to other units, but we never had an incident of essential kit being forgotten, or lack of spares.

That's impressive, I've never heard of any unit that could make that claim. I don't know, Reserve units in the UK must be massively different from what we call the Reserves. In the US, Reserves have outdated, crappy equipment that is usually left over from Vietnam or Desert Storm. Their discipline usually matches, despite their good intentions.

I have a couple of Brit officers in my large class, I'll have to ask them about this stuff on Monday. I just find it mind-boggling that they don't do it. That's not a derisive comment, it's just one of astonishment.

I didn't mean to imply that you guys were "wrong" for operating the way you did in an absolute sense of the word. After all, there are a million ways to fight. I just meant what I said, I could not operate that way as a leader. See below for reasons.

Our leadership chose to treat us as professionals, and it paid off for them.

It isn't a question of "treating them as professionals" or not "treating them as professionals" in my opinion. In mine, it's being a professional leader yourself and taking every action you can to mitigate as much tactical and accidental risk as possible to ensure that as many of your people come home as possible.

It sounds melodramatic but as a former NCO and now an officer in the Infantry, I've been entrusted by mothers and fathers to do everything in my power to keep their sons safe. Even more basic than that though, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if one of my guys didn't have something that got them or someone else killed or maimed on one of my patrols. My incident with the 240 glove was minor, but when we needed it, we didn't have it, and as a young Lieutenant who had gotten lazy, I checked myself.

You keep mentioning your "Flight." I assume you were RAF

[perardua]

RAF Regiment, yes (too blue for the army, too green for the RAF). That might be another cause for a difference, the highest level we operate at is Sqn level (reinforced company), and nearly everything we do is at Flight (Platoon) or often Multiple (half Flight) level. And the RAF culture is very different from Army culture, which is a whole other thread (as the people responsible for trying to make the rest of the air force realise that it's actually a military organisation, we sometimes... clash with members of other trade groups).

I think one of the differences between US reserves and ourselves is that we don't deploy as a formed unit, we get attached to a regular unit and do our pre-deployment training with them. I get the impression the US operates differently. I dont know if it's different for the TA (I've heard of TA soldiers being called up and then deployed a couple of weeks later, our cycle is normally to get the call up, go through 4 months PDT with the unit we're attached to, then do the tour). As for our equipment, for reserves we're quite up to date, and the sheer fact we've got someone on virtually every deployment means we keep up to date with what's in theatre. Discipline, as mentioned, revolves around the fact that if you don't want to be there, you won't turn up, and then you get booted, especially now we're fully manned. But, as I said, I trained, was equipped by, and deployed with a regular unit.

And finally, I would be interested to hear what the policy is in other units. I'm pretty limited to the RAF Regiment so itd be nice to find out if my experiences in the reserves and with regular troops are a pleasant aberration or a common thing. I'm pretty sure, as with all things, it depends on the situation and the troops involved though.