970719 - Yesterday morning we were issued some gear including: an alice pack with frame, poncho liner, half-shelter tent, tent pegs, shovel, butt pack, sleeping mat, and waterproofing bag. We then had a Series Commander's Inspection in the afternoon accompanied by a J.O.B. inspection. J.O.B. stands for Junk On the Bunk which means that we had to arrange all of our gear neatly and uniformly on our racks. I easily passed both inspections. Today we messed around with drill, I got put in the pit for scratching my nose, we had a class on substance abuse, we kicked some more drill, and that's about it. I'm looking forward to Chapel tomorrow since it'll be the first time in 3 weeks I can go. 41 days left.
The gear that we were issued for for the next component of our training. In two days (on July 20) we were going to be heading out to the field and spending the next three days there. Therefore, we needed to get some gear.
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The Alice pack is just a basic pack, in this case with an external frame.
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The poncho liner is actually a thin blanket. Since we were there in the Summer, there was no need to get an actual sleeping bag issued. Instead, we used this. The poncho liner was a real lifesaver throughout the rest of boot camp too. I (and several other recruits) would use it as my blanket back at the squad bay and would just sleep on top of my covers in my rack. That way, making up my rack the next morning would take much less time. It did come with the downside of sleeping on top of a very scratchy wool blanket in a poorly air-conditioned squad bay in July and August, but you take the good with the bad.
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Shelter-Half with tent poles and stakes: What you're looking at to the left is actually two shelter-halves, plus the poles and stakes for two people. Each recruit (and later, each Marine) is issued half of a tent, three tent pole sections, and 5 stakes. With that, you can construct a lean-to or you can combine your gear with another recruit and make a full tent. Note that there was no floor to the tent. This was actually not a terrible burden in boot camp because our bivouac (camp) site had a thick floor of soft pine needles. Plus, we had sleeping mats. Once I got to my unit in the Marines, however, we typically went to Quantico, where it was always either raining, freezing, or both. And we did not have sleeping mats. We did have sleeping bags, but it was still pretty miserable.
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The Entrenching Tool, or E-Tool, is the best equipment I was ever issued in boot camp or the Marines. It is an extremely simple tool: it's basically a folding shovel. But, since you can fold it, you can also lock the spade in at a 90-degree angle. That means that the E-Tool can serve as a shovel, saw, hatchet, hammer, axe, rifle stand, helmet holder, just to name a few. And that doesn't even get into the uses it has in combat. I may or may not still have the E-Tool I was issued in my Supply unit. I'll never tell.
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The butt pack is as awesome as it sounds: a government-issued fanny pack. It attached to the cartridge belt we had already been carrying (with our canteens) and we used it to carry our ponchos and knowledge books, among other things.
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It's a sleep mat.
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The waterproof bag, or "Willy Pete" bag, was just a rubber-lined bag that went into the pack. Then everything went into it and, theoretically, was kept dry. I say theoretically, because these bags were old and very worn out.
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| Here's a sample J.O.B. inspection layout. This has several items that we didn't have (namely, the knives), but you get the idea. Every recruit was required to have his gear laid out in the exact same manner. It took a while, but for someone like me who likes visual puzzles and details, it was pretty simple. |
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