Resupplying for a Combat Assault

This snapshot of infantry soldiers milling around on a fire base looks chaotic but it was not.  We were loading up with supplies before heading back to the jungle.  Food, water and munitions were there for the picking.  We usually carried enough food and water for three days.

Food available to us was boxes of C-rations and long range patrol packets or LRP's.  C-rations were mostly canned goods that I would eat for breakfast and lunch.  I would grab canned fruit, coffee cakes, ham & eggs, beans and franks, and ham slices.  For snacks there were crackers and cheese and cookies that came in cans.  C-Ration boxes also contained powdered cocoa, coffee, salt and pepper and even cigarettes.

Long range patrol packets were eaten  at supper time.  The food was freeze dried.  There was spaghetti and meat sauce, Chicken and rice, beef and rice and chili con carne.  Open the packet of food, add hot water, let it steep and you had a hot meal.

The water we received was heavily chlorinated.  We drank it, cooked with it and washed with it.  We laced the water we drank with a little kool-aid to help make it more palatable.  We each carried eight to ten quarts of water for three days.

Munitions were those things we ran out of when fighting a war.  There was M-16 ammunition, M-60 ammunition, claymore mines, fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades.  A firefight was no place to find out that you did not have enough ammunition with you.

Altogether, our pack would weigh around eighty pounds when fully loaded for three days and ready to go.