Personal Belongings/Gear

C150J

C150J

Well-Known Member
Hi Guys -

Just a very random question: when deployed, what personal items can you bring with you? Are there size limitations? For example, I've heard of some people bringing over laptops and MP3 players. Are there certain guidelines?

Secondly, if you look at some of the images taken by Army photographers, you'll notive that some infantry have their own knives/pouches/etc. Is this common?

Thanks!
J.
 
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Hi Guys -

Just a very random question: when deployed, what personal items can you bring with you? Are there size limitations? For example, I've heard of some people bringing over laptops and MP3 players. Are there certain guidelines?

Secondly, if you look at some of the images taken by Army photographers, you'll notive that some infantry have their own knives/pouches/etc. Is this common?

Thanks!
J.

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There's a weight/bag limit. Most of the amenities you see weren't brought by the individual, but were packed on one of the unit's cargo pallets. Still, as light infantry, you won't have much since you generally hump what you own, but back at base camp there will usually be a morale tent with different things to do. Guys who are tank crew, or similiar vehicle crew have a little more space to carry their stuff, obviously.

Personal knives are common. My unit pruchased Smith and Wesson SWAT buckknives for all the pilots when we went over. I carried a medieval dagger stowed in it's sheath and attached to the opposite side of my shoulder holster from my pistol. And the fact I carried a shoulder rig was non-standard, as issue holsters were sewn to the survival vests.
 
A Medieval dagger? Daftarian, have you gone 'goth' on us?
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Unless, of course, you went "Sikh"!
 
Depends on which branch of service you're talking about. However, as a general rule, it usually boils down to what you can carry or how much space you have. Speaking from a Navy perspective, people brought as much crap as they could fit into their racks or workspaces aboard ship. You'd be surprised.

Marines and soldiers are more limited in what they can bring, but then again it also depends on what your job is and if you have access to any storage areas such as on a base or in a vehicle. Infantry probably has the greatest limitations because all your storage space is in the packs that you hump on your own, but mtsu and the other "grunts" on this board would be more qualified to answer that. Definitely personal electronic equipment (gameboys, cdplayers, etc.) is not out of the question especially with how tiny mp3 players have gotten.
 
Hey Gator, were you in the Navy? If so, thanks a million for your service!
 
In the spirit of a lot of discussions on this board, I was going to post something smart-alecky to the effect of looking up my posts or my profile then thought better of pissing off the webmaster
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Seriously though, Doug, I and I'm sure all other former or present military appreciate your gratitude, and I'd like to thank you a million for this website.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Hi Guys -

Just a very random question: when deployed, what personal items can you bring with you? Are there size limitations? For example, I've heard of some people bringing over laptops and MP3 players. Are there certain guidelines?

Secondly, if you look at some of the images taken by Army photographers, you'll notive that some infantry have their own knives/pouches/etc. Is this common?

Thanks!
J.

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If you bring it and you don't mind humping it, you can bring it.

For some odd reason that I have yet to figure out, the Navy allows personnel to transfer in the middle of a deployment, so that when you leave you pretty much have to hump everything out yourself. Or if you were smart and knowing you'd leave in the middle of a deployment, bring boxes with you, then mail everything back home from the ship's post office. You'd still have the normal limitations of what you could mail.

Having left in the middle of a deployment twice, it really sucks dragging all of your crap thru the city of Bahrain or Golfito, Costa Rica looking for transportation to the airport...

When I was working with the Marines, we simulated our self-propelled radio HMMWV being taken out by enemy fire, so basically my det had to carry all the equipment we needed to still be an effective contributor to the unit which meant in addition to the new bivy sacks and tents they gave us, your 1 gallon of water and 3 MREs, NVGs, binos, gas mask, e-tool, mosquito netting, weapon and ammunition for it (since all I get to use is a useless 9mm) I drew an M-16 and the ammo to go with that as well, we get to hump the radar beacons, HF (to talk to the fire support ships), UHF (to talk to your CAS) and VHF (to talk to the arty) radios, laser designators, the six gazillion batteries to go with them, and to help out the infantry, belts of .50cal, and your 3 mortar rounds to help out the mortar platoon. Then go for a 25 mile leisurely hike in the desert at 3 mph.

But going from one location to another, you carry your combat load (minus the ammo and batteries and things like the radios, etc), and your personal stuff is packed into your duffel bag which get loaded into quadcons for transport. At the other end you get your stuff back and you hump everything you brought to your tent and cot.

The Army lives in grand style with air conditioning in their tents... With the Marines well we used natural ventilation...
 
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Depends on which branch of service you're talking about. However, as a general rule, it usually boils down to what you can carry or how much space you have. Speaking from a Navy perspective, people brought as much crap as they could fit into their racks or workspaces aboard ship. You'd be surprised.

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So how much stuff did you have packed in the Fanroom??
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We did great with ours... looked like a warehouse with all the stuff we'd pack into it.. well until the new captain ruined it for us!
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Hmm, lets see. I think on most of our deployments I brought a small t.v., definitely my Playstation with games, boombox with cd's, and a cd player. One of us would bring a VCR and we all would bring movies. And last but not least we would have the "porn locker"!
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. Everone would contribute to the cause. I would bring a descent amount of goodies to get me by until we had regular mail service. Pretty much you take what you can squeeze into any spaces you can.
 
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When I was working with the Marines

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What's up!! What did you do in the Navy? were you a Doc??
 
I dealt with plenty of Marines on the Gator Freighter I was on . 1000 Sailors and 2000 Marines. Think I've heard every Sailor/Marine zinger there is
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But the USMC Airdales were a great group of people.
 
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: But the USMC Airdales were a great group of people.

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I've heard rumor that Marine air wing people are slackers........


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I'll never forget when the Brown shirt was getting ready to hand a harrier off to me. He went up under the nose wheel, did his checks, came out with a bundle of metal and wires (hidden in his float coat) showed it to the pilot and shruged, threw it over the side, Saluted the pilot and handed it over to me. The pilot shut down in the middle of the deck and jumped out of the bird freaking out as to what it was. Me and the plane captain were about in tears laughin so hard. Needless to say the Pilot didn't think it was too funny. Nor did the Airboss for basically shutting down his deck for a while. Good times!
 
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I dealt with plenty of Marines on the Gator Freighter I was on .

[/ QUOTE ]Which Gator Freighter was that, yankee? LHD-5, the mighty USS Bataan myself.

Fan rooms we kept pretty clean, but us FC's and the ET's pretty much owned all the workspaces in the island and there are numerous cubbyholes, equipment lockers, tool box storage bins, and false decks to hide personal gear and overseas "contraband" (souvenirs, so don't get any ideas, people). We had the usual complement of Playstations, Xboxes, DVD players, VCR's, laptops, and even desktop computers in our spaces as long and they could be secured to something. Two of the ET's set up a full stereo system with surround sound and bass speaker connected to their game systems and computer in one of the radar rooms. On my first deployment, the ET LPO had a full DJ system with loudspeakers and all the CDs to satisfy a club set up in one of his workspaces. It came in handy whenever we had "Steel Beach" picnics underway or dockside in foreign ports. And, H46, we had more of a porn DVD case rather than a locker. Easily hidden, and portable storage kept female DIVO's happy.
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When I was working with the Marines

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What's up!! What did you do in the Navy? were you a Doc??

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Nope, not a doc. I am a Surface guy, so my time with the Marines was doing the fire support job so I was at the artillery battalion and got detted out to the infantry battalion as an liaison officer to control naval fires but I could find myself directing CAS and arty as well. But I confused the corpsman too who thought I was a doc who couldn't wear my collar devices properly.

Got to experience riding the same gator freighter from the Green side as a passenger with 31 MEU and six years later on the Blue side doing my normal Surface job.
 
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