Howdy folks,
I need to know what the US Marines carry with them into combat. Rifles, side arms, ammunition, and any other equipment a marine might carry with him for an afternoon.
Marc
A war face. That’s it. A mean, terrifying, ugly war face. Enemy sees the war face, he fails to notice the marine is buck nekkid.
–Jeers.
So when the Drill Instructor told Pvt. Joker that he’d “rip off his head and skull fuck him” he was actually going to teach him hand to hand combat marine style?
Marc
You are most gracious. I couldn’t wait for a serious answer before posting. I’m pretty sure they wear a newer helmet that actually stops the odd bullet.
M16A2, Minimi, M92 Beretta 9mm pistol, Dragon, M60 MG.
Detailed info on the USMC equipment here:
http://www.marines.com/about_marines/marinegear.asp?format=flash
they would have:- ammunition pouches, canteen, entrenching tool, bayonet (maybe), magazines for the rifle, his share of the squad’s ammo for the machine gun, his share of the squad’s grenades, radio if an NCO, GPS receiver, (maybe), batteries for the platoon radio if the radio man has managed to palm them off onto him, flashlight, night-vision device if they expect to out after dark, pack with rations for how long they expect to be out plus extra clothing, maybe an anti-tank rocket for bunker-busting, gasmask, poncho, maybe a first aid kit…I’m sure somebody can add a few to this.
My info is a little dated. But, in 1969 I carried helmet, flackjacket, M-16, 600 rounds (30 magazines and some loose rounds), 4 grenades, 4 LAWs (IIRC Light Antitank Weapon), a block of C-4, 2-3 canteens, 3-4 days food, long sleeve shirt, soft cap, poncho liner (a poncho if there was a lot of rain), a few odds and ends like tooth brush, maps & compass, letter writing stuff and soap, a book to read, one spoon.
Sometimes I’d get stuck with a can of M-60 ammo, batteries, StarLit Scope, etc. Carried a Staff Sgt down a mountain in a rain storm one night. He’d been shot through both knees. But I had some help there.
This wouldn’t be a very fun place without the jokes.
Marc
Thanks a bunch folks. I checked out the USMC website but beyond a few vehicles and a rifle I couldn’t find much information about what they used.
Marc
Mk VII has a good list, but add a flak jacket, web gear (load bearing harness, Deuce Gear, 782 Gear, whatever they call it now) Camelback, ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate, I think) device to administer in case of chemical attack, maybe a map, very possible a K-Bar or similar knife, compass, maybe some hot sauce, chewing tobacco, and like SandyHook says, a good spoon. Good spoons are indispensible in combat. On my old flak jacket there were these three “loops” on the left breast, ostensibly for grenades. I had a small container of Tobasco in one, and my good spoon in the other.
For a literary list, try “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, a terrific read. It’s a collection of stories based around a list of the things carried by a soldier (army, rather than Marine, I believe) in Vietnam.
Please enlighten me as to the reason why a good spoon is so indispensible. I must admit that it never occured to me that such a simple tool would be so important.
Marc
If experience means anything, he is carrying one item more than he wants to hump and one item less than he needs. It never fails. If you carry three frags you’ll need four. If you carry four you’ll need five. The time you don’t take extra batteries for the flashlight is the night you’ll need them. It is a constant balancing act between the limits of strength and endurance and the anticipated needs. You will always guess wrong. You will always carry stuff to no purpose and leave out stuff you need, the odd staff sergeant notwithstanding…
So here’s the reason I need the information. I’m running a game of All Flesh Must be Eaten at a game convention in September. Uh, AFMBE is a role playing game kind of like Dungeons and Dragons except instead of dungeons and dragons you have zombies and city streets.
So being a zombie game the scenario is set up similiar to Dawn of the Dead. Zombies are eating everything they can get their rotten little hands on and the military is trying to kill them and protect civilians at the same time. In the scenario the players are marines who are being evacuated when their helicopter goes down in the city. I’m just trying to come up with a good list of what the average marine would have on his person in that kind of non-existant situation.
Marc
If the Marines were sent in prepared, I’m sure they’d be carrying mission-specific equipment, like corpse-handling gear and firestarting materials. I guess their weapons would run to the high-rate-of-fire small arms, like SMGs, the better to plow through hordes of unarmed undead. Fragmentation grenades would be highly predictable gear as well, and possibly booby-traps as well. (In other words, zombie trips the wire and zombie gets blown to chunks by a frag mine.)
What am I talking about… you need a shotgun for this kind of work. 
Preferably a fully-auto shotgun mounted on the light vehicle of your choice.
What about flamethrowers? Huh? Don’t they still have flamethrowers? That’d be good for killin’ zombies. Errrrrr…re-killin’ zombies…oh, whatever.
Don’t forget the Digital Camouflage, that stuff is cool.
It may have been Napolean who said (in French), “An army marches on its stomach”, or words to that effect. Back in my day, the MRE system was in flux, we got some older meals with the crappy, white plastic spoon that shattered (and would become a nice slashing weapon if need be), then there were the NEW ones with the good, strong, brown plastic spoon. My spoon was a creature comfort almost, an outward indication that when I got my next brown plastic bagged MRE, I could eat it with aplomb. It could cut soft meats, mixed up dehydrated peaches, crackers, sugar, and creamer to make peach cobbler, it cleaned up nicely, it was large, and it didn’t break.
Marines will have an item like this on their person.
Atropine, actually, at least back in the 80s – it was a set of 2, 1 jet (small) atropine, 1 jet (large) 2-Protopam-Chloride. I understand that since they have changed the formulation so it’s a one-shot thing.