WWII US Army Basic Combat Gear

Alright Private, welcome back. Now we get to the fun stuff. Combat gear. This is the very basic loadout. Every unit's got a little bit of a difference in how they carry their gear. For the most part, this is a good general impression right here. So, what you're going to start with is the cartridge belt. You have five pockets, each side. Lots of different variants. This one right here is actually more of a first war variant. You have the extra snap inside, which was often gone or just pushed out of the way because they just slowed people down. Now if you're carrying the 1903, which we'll cover in a minute, it was designed for the five round clips to go on each side of this. The Garand has the eight block clip, will not fit with that in there. So, it's up to you depending on what you're using and how you want to use it, but my suggestion is ignore it, put everything on the inside. Moving on, you have the first aid pouch. Few different variants. For the most part, the army side has the angled pocket like this. There are small ones and large ones and that just depends on what area you've got and which first aid pouch or which first aid gauze you're going to actually carry. Almost everyone had these. Oftentimes you'll see it right here on the right hip. Mine is not, it's actually on my backside because I want my compass up closer. There is the standard way of doing things and there's the way, once you got to the front, you learned things worked a little bit better in certain different ways, so you moved your gear accordingly. So, try it like this. If you don't like it, move it around. Next up is the canteen. There's only two or three styles that you commonly see. This is the late style with the larger backing. The early style is a lot smaller and is prone to ripping. I've got about three that are sitting on the workbench right now for my seamstress to take care of, but it holds the canteen and your canteen cup. Once you become sergeant, you get quick skills like that. All right, this is the L-shaped cup or L-handle cup for your canteen, like this. This can be used for just about anything. You want to cook soup, you want to drink coffee, you want to drink anything, great. If you need to mix something, do it. Even if you need to wax something, but this is really lightweight, use something else like the buddy or rifle or something, or your helmet. So you've got the little latch right here, it goes closed. A lot of the World War II variants have their date marked. This is a SM Co. 1945. It just depends on what you get. If you don't get a dated one, not a big deal. 1945, chances are this never saw World War II, but it probably saw at least Korea, but it's the same freaking thing. When you're doing living history, reenactment, a lot of people aren't going to look at the stamp itself and say, you're wrong. If they do, they're going to find something else to complain about. Just move on. Now, that goes on the inside of your canteen like that. If you're trying to figure out which direction it goes, think about it, it's the curve of your body, so it kind of has a little curve in it. Make sure that hugs your hip. Two different styles of canteens that I've seen, for the most part, you've got the flat side like that, and there's one that's got a ridge around the top. Both are valid. If you have the plastic cap, that's a World War II era, the metal cap is first for. If you are looking for one, make sure that the cork is there, otherwise you're going to have a leaky day, and if it gets cold out, you're going to be miserable. All right, moving on. Next step is bayonet. There's a few different variants, and you want to make sure you get the right variant for the weapon you're carrying, as well as the time frame. This one right here should be good for any Garands or 1903s. It's not a great one, but it'll do the job. You also have the bayonet sheath right here. I'm not going to cover all the intricacies of this, because that's everywhere. The same thing with a lot of the common US rifles, they're super commonly found online, YouTube, there's books everywhere, for the Garand and the 1903 in particular. Now, when we start covering other weaponry, I'm going to cover a little bit more, because it's not as well known, especially when you get into the full automatics, the really heavy stuff. It's, with all the laws that prevent people from acquiring it just willy-nilly, it's very difficult to find the information. All right, so you also have the T-handle shovel. This is the early version, wonderfully well used. Make sure you note all that nice clay on there, excellent. That has a pouch that typically goes on to the haversack, which we're going to cover in just a moment. This is the early version with the fixed handle. I am carrying on my hip the later version, which has the folding handle. We're not going to open this one today, because apparently this one's seized a little bit, but you get the point. The pouch has also changed, it's just inverted. Everything else is relatively close to the same, and this is another one you can check dates, but when it comes down to it, make sure you find the one that's right for you, and it's going to do the job. Now, on to the haversack. The top portion is the meat pouch. This is designed to carry your utensils in a leather carrying pouch, as well as your mess kit. We're going to go over mess gear later on. That is not always what was carried in here, especially later on in the war, a lot of troops decided that, why the hell am I carrying a mess kit everywhere? I'm not going to be using it, everyone else is going to be bringing food up to the front anyways. So that was often left behind, or at the HQ, the mess hall, whatever, for the guys to bring up. So this turned into a wonderful carry pouch of whatever you needed. You could probably fit about two or three K-Rats in here, as well as other good stuff. That is held onto the haversack by two little eyelets right here, and it's just a strap. It's not cosmic at all, as an example. There you go. We're going to leave that undone. This is supposed to be a backpack. Believe it or not. Let's get this out of the way. You too, you're going to get in my way. This is one of the most weird designed bags that I've ever seen in my life. For the longest time, I didn't believe that would actually work. However, it is effective, and it has a lot of options because of its weirdness. So we're going to cover the haversack in its entirety later on down the road, because that's worthy of its own freaking show, but generally speaking, you're going to put your stuff in here and flip this over, and then you're going to take your side, pick an eyelet, push it through for all three, flip that side over, just like so for all three. And once this is done, it actually does hold things. Be careful of the small stuff because you have a big old gap right here that they will fall out, but if you pack it right, you won't have a problem. There's also supposed to be what's called the diaper on it. A lot of times those were ditched immediately because they were just obnoxious and not all that useful. This pack actually does not have a diaper with it, but when you install it, it'll be down here. There's a little leather strap that goes on it, so you can actually attach it to the pack. Once you're done, you have one last tail strap, bring that up, and there you go. That's a haversack. Now flipping it over, you've got backpack straps, essentially. Not quite. A lot of times these were used in lieu of suspenders. These right here will attach to the back of your belt, and these up front will attach to the front. They will come down something like this when you attach it to your own belt. It was not always used as such. The 36 Division, I know, was more commonly used, but units like the 45th, they didn't use it as much. So you can either attach it to your belt, or you can leave it like a backpack. I personally prefer the backpack because guess what? When you're under fire, you can take it off, you're good to go. You don't have as much weight, you can get to the enemy and take him out. So that's the combat gear in a nutshell. We're going to briefly cover the primary weapons of a rifleman. First up is Old Faithful, the M1 Garand. Second we'll cover the 1903 Springfield. Not officially called the 1903 Springfield, it's just the nickname. It's commonly seen as made by Springfield Armory. But the M1 Garand, eight-shot semi-automatic, it was the greatest battle weapon ever implemented. A lot of people are very common with the usual ping that happens after the ejection. So I'm going to go ahead and say that yes, the ping was heard, and it probably was used every once in a while as a, hey, the enemy's out, let's go get them. But a lot of our troops were very well trained to the point where they could reload quickly, and by the time that the enemy was trying to get them, they were already in the open. So you already have eight rounds ready to rock and roll, and you nail them. All right, now, what do you want for a World War II era Garand? You'll notice the sling, black and steel, leather strap. The webbing strap is a possibility. It was actually used fairly early in the war, but this is a more comfortable, more common sling to me. Everyone's going to have their own preferences. The web sling, known as the M1, it's very easy to use. So that's one of the reasons that people are going to have it. I personally just love the look of the leather, so I'm going to keep my leather. One thing to look for on this one is the prong. A lot of the more modern ones will have a four-slot cross. You want right here the two-slot, and that's it. This one does not have it, but you want what's called lock bar sights. Once I get those, I'll make a better video of it. But note that a lot of the Garands you're going to find nowadays, we're not going to have it. It's going to have post-war modifications. That's the big part. Other than that, make sure it functions. You're going to want a blank adapter if you plan on doing any tacticals, anything like that. We're going to cover blank fire later on. That's, again, a movie in itself. All right. Now, if you are trying to do early war, or you can't afford a Garand because they're expensive, you don't want to mess with the semi-automatics, the blank adapters, all that good stuff, 1903 is a perfectly valid option. This is a World War I circa 1903 made by Rock Island. It is all pretty much to the original specs. Five-shot bolt action, so your firepower is a lot less, but it's also more reliable. And again, you don't have to worry about the cycling, nothing like that. It's a lot easier. The A3 is an option as well. This rear sight has moved here, and it's a smaller sight that kind of resembles this. That's the big difference. And of course, the wood's going to come all the way back to here because you don't have this big sight anymore. For the most part, you get an 03, you get an A3, they're going to be right. There's not a whole lot of modifications that were done to them afterwards. And like I said, either one is going to be acceptable for reenactment use as a US troop. These were not commonly seen later on in the war. They were transitioning over to grenade launchers, but they were still, you could use them all the way up to the end. But the ideal one is going to be the Garand. That was the most commonly seen, especially mid to late. The 1903 A4 is going to be considered a specialty weapon. We're going to cover that in its own section because I've got a couple other specialty weapons I want to show you guys. But with that, you've got the combat gear, you've got the uniform, and you know which weapon to use. You should at least look the part now, right? Cool. So next time, we're going to cover how everything goes together a little bit better.