This is his fourth (I'm going to stop counting very soon) article for Ranger Up and it ranges from being useful to grossly inappropriate to usefully grossly inappropriate and we love it. By Big Tobacco I wrote this while smoking a Rocky Patel “The Edge.” I scan my email inbox: I'm asking for your advice. Anything you can tell me about what I should (or shouldn't) bring as far as creature comfort items, gear, what have you. I don't know exactly where I'll be or what my living conditions will be like, so I'm trying to cover all the bases. It isn’t often that I get a chance to help a fellow NCO anymore, so I think about this soldier’s request. I look over at my wall locker and see a pile of useless gear. This is my second deployment, but it was totally different than the first. If I knew six months ago what I know now, how would I pack differently? What would I do differently? How would I train differently? What would I want to know if I were deploying to Iraq? If you are National Guard, odds are you will do the crappy jobs that the active Army doesn’t want to do: ECPs, FOB security and convoy security. You will never kick in a door or use a lick of Arabic. So put down the Blackhawk X-TREEM gear catalog right now. You won’t need any of it. Tell your commander to put down the FM 7-8, he won’t use that either. Personal Stuff to Bring: #1. Laptop. You don’t have a laptop? Do you churn your own butter too? Put down the damn buggy whip and go out and buy one. Laptops are essential when you are in country. Your laptop will be your only outlet to the world. It will be your entertainment center, your source of pornography and your communications device. Don’t buy a huge or expensive laptop that requires a carrying case. You don’t need a giant laptop to send email and the Air Force loves to screw with soldiers who try to get on the plane with more than one carry on. Keep the laptop under 14 inches in size and under $500, so it will fit in your assault pack and if it breaks, you won’t be that upset. 2. Thumb Drive, Headset, DVD ripper and External Hard drive. Thumb drives are the real network of the military right now. You will need it to get Power Point classes from the instructors during train up and exchange and funny movies with other soldiers. Get a headset so that you can videoconference with your family using Skype. It’s free and works most of the time. Buy software to rip your DVD collection and put the collection on your laptop. This beats carrying around that giant case of DVDs and you will be able to share the movies with your friends. Finally, buy a small, palm-sized external hard drive that runs on USB power. You will need this for… #3 Pornography. Pornography is prohibited under General Order #1. Uh… anyway. Take your external hard drive and load it up with as much porn as possible. Much of the internet in country is blocked and extremely slow. The days of downloading a 74MB Bukkake video on a whim are over for the next year. So take as much porn with you as possible and load it onto your external hard drive. #4. PT Gear and extra shoes. This will be your only attire for walking around off duty in Kuwait or Iraq. You will also need it when you walk to the shower. Take at least 4 pairs of shorts and t-shirts. This way you will have one for PT, one to walk around and sleep in, one in reserve, and one in the wash. Your shoes will get sweaty and they won’t dry very fast in the frigid air-conditioning of the tents in Kuwait, so bring an extra pair of shoes to walk around in while sweaty sneakers dry. #5. Civilian clothes. Eventually, you are going to want to wear something other than PTs or ACUs. Bring one or two T-shirts and shorts to sleep in. I’ve found Ranger Up t-shirts to be the most preferred item for this list. So buy one or two Ranger Up t-shirts and make a statement in your room while you sleep. If you are a female, bring silly pajama bottoms and a tank top to sleep in. Sooner or later, you will want to feel like a girl again, so also bring one or two pairs of girly panties as a change of pace to your boring issued underwear. I’ve talked to a number of females and they’ve all said the same thing: you can’t wear cosmetics or jeans, so wearing a nice pair of girly underwear once in a while will help you stay sane. #6. Scotch tape and a stapler. No, I’m not kidding. If you are in a leadership position, bring scotch tape and a stapler. You will need this stuff to post bulletins and staple counseling statements. Equipment to Bring: #1. Buttstock magazine pouch. When you are walking around the FOB, you will have to carry a weapon and one magazine. Yes, you can put your magazine in your lower leg ACU pocket, but the rounds will keep smacking into your leg and this will get old fast. Also note that when you wear your PTs, you will have nowhere to put the magazine. Get a buttstock magazine holder, or better yet, get your supply sergeant to order them. #2. A pistol shoulder holster. If you are issued a pistol, odds are that supply will also give you a drop-leg holster. You will feel cool walking around with it for a while and then it’s going to start chafing your balls. When you are walking around in PTs, the leg holster will look extremely gay hanging off of your PT belt. Do yourself a favor and get a shoulder holster for walking around the FOB and leave the drop-leg holster for real-world missions where everything else is chafing your balls anyway. #3. CATs. Have supply order as many Combat Application Tourniquets as they can. When you get them, take them out of the plastic and size this to your largest extremity (this is usually your thigh, not your head). Practice putting on the CAT with one hand. Make sure all of your soldiers know how to do this as well. Put one CAT in your bottom calf pocket and one in a shoulder pocket on the opposite arm. You can bleed to death in two minutes. The CAT will save your life. #4. An armband ID holder. Ok, it took me a while to get over this because I feel that they are extremely gay, but they are highly useful. Normally, the only things you need to carry around the FOB are your ID, your Eagle Cash card and maybe your laundry ticket. If you try to carry this stuff in your PT pants, they will fall out, leading to all sorts of crappy repercussions. Just buy the damn armband holder and wear it. You can always put it in your pocket when you wear your ACUs. #5. PT Belt, extra laundry bag and small LED flashlight. When you are in Kuwait, you will have to wear a PT belt sashed around your shoulder at night whether you are in ACUs or PTs. Most PT belts are too short to be sashed, so they will be very tight and probably cut off the blood to your brain… which is probably how officers came up with the idea for wearing the belts anyway. So buy a good PT belt that is long enough to be sashed or buy two PT belts and connect them together. Get an extra laundry bag. You’ll need it to hold new dirty laundry while your bag is being washed by contractors. Turnaround time is usually 3 days, so your laundry will build up. Finally, buy one of those small quarter-sized push-on LED flashlights. The lights cost less than $10 and are useful for when your roommate is trying to sleep and you need a little light to find your cum sock. #6. Seatbelt Cutters. The odds of getting blasted have decreased, but the odds of rolling over are still the same. Have your supply sergeant buy 4 seatbelt cutters per vehicle. Tape one to each side of the radio mount. Tape one to the back of the front seats so the backseaters can get to them. If you rollover in water, you will die. So practice your rollover drills. Equipment You Don’t Need: #1. Basically don’t bring anything that says “Tactical” “xTREME” or “Spec OPS.” You don’t need a dump pouch. 99% of you aren’t going to be shooting anything, much less changing magazines. Don’t buy $150 ballistic sunglasses. The $20 issued UVEX glasses work just fine and you can always buy more lenses cheap when your lenses get scratched up. You don’t need a gangsta grip or a bipod. The days of kicking in doors are over. If you have a red dot sight, tactical light or a PEQ-4 or PEQ-15 put two AA batteries and a lithium battery inside the deadspace of your pistol grip and tape it up with grip tape. That way, you’ll always have an extra battery if you need them without spending $60 for an eXtREME BlackHawk SPEC Ops Ranger MaXimum Gear Tactical buttstock. #2. Expensive boots. I’m kind of iffy on this. If you are on your feet at an ECP all day, buy the boots. Your feet are worth it. If you are going to be in a Hummer or sitting at a desk, just wear your issue boots. Train up on: #1. CLS. Every swinging dick and every swinging clit needs to know how to start an IV. Get everybody CLS qualified. You don’t need fluid to practice your sticks, you just need catheters. This is a great for downtime training, it builds camaraderie and it teaches a valuable skill. You might never fire your rifle, but anybody could get mortared. Do you want your privates to run away in fear or stop you from bleeding to death? Get everybody CLS qualified. #2. Everyone needs to qualify on the M240B. When you get in country, you will suddenly find yourself with a shortage of gunners. People will go on leave, or privates will get pulled for other missions. Qualify everybody on the M240 so that anyone from the commander to the cooks knows how to use that machine gun. #3. Everyone needs to learn how to drive the M1151 and M1114. Driving an uparmored Hummer is a lot different than driving an M998. Your best chance of losing somebody is not from small arms fire or an IED but from a rollover because the driver was a retard. Like point number 2, get everybody from the commander on down qualified to drive. As people go on leave, you will experience a shortage of drivers, and at least soldiers can fill in where needed. Run your soldiers through HEAT (Rollover training) as many times as the instructors will allow. You might never get blown up, but someone will roll over. #4. Commo. Your commo guy can only be in one place at one time and he usually isn’t in that place when you need him. Everybody needs to learn how to program a SINCGARS radio and learn how to fill the radio with an ANCD or SKL. If you don’t have any idea what I am talking about, you are already behind the curve. Learn how to do those things now and then teach your soldiers. If your privates are scared to talk on the radio, make them do it until they lose their fear. #5. Warlock/Duke Listen and take notes when the Navy gives you a class on the Warlock & Duke systems. When you get in country, find out where the CREWs (Counter Radio Electronic Warfare) maintenance personnel are located and get your slutty female 74D to suck their dicks. This will make them your best friends. You will need them when you can’t figure out why your box is dead. Don’t bother training on: #1. Roadmarches. You will never roadmarch anywhere in Iraq. You will drive everywhere in Iraq, or you will take your armor to work and leave it there for the day. Roadmarching will not help your men do anything. However, roadmarching will give your soldier torn up knees, screwed up feet, and probably place them in the TMC making them miss valuable training that they need. If you want a quarter of your soldiers in the hospital and fail validation due to numbers, by all means, roadmarch them. If you want the maximum numbers to deploy, come up with a light PT plan that will slim them down but keep them whole. #2. FM 7-8. It’s not 1985 anymore. Get over it. You will never clear a trench or knock out a bunker. It’s not 2006 anymore. You will never clear a house. That’s the active Army’s job. Get back to your ECP and shut the fuck up for the next 12 months. #3. Clearing weapons. Put an end to this stupidity now. Nobody will walk around on the FOB with their weapon in Amber status. For some reason, people at the mobilization station think that they do. Walking around with blanks in your rifle to “practice” unloading only sets people up for failure and embarrassing moments when people discharge blank rounds into a clearing barrel. You may go Amber or even Red at the ECP, but never, ever when you are walking around the FOB. #4. Arabic. You will never talk to an Iraqi. If you are talking to an Iraqi, he is on the FOB for a reason and probably speaks pretty good English. “Kif” (stop), “Imshee” (go away) and “Shukran” (thanks) are the only Arabic you will ever need to know if you do. Anything else is time wasted that could be spent in drivers training. As I finish this, my cigar is smoked down to the nub. A couple over to my right in the smoking gazebo is flirting with each other and I really have to pee. I hope that you take this advice to heart, but… you’ll probably be sent to Afghanistan anyway. BT |
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