The Foot Soldier's Load

By Phil Blake, formerly of Company A, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 12^th Cavalry

        For those of us who may have forgotten (and after forty plus years, who wouldn’t?), and for our wives and other family members who may be curious, following is a list of the weapons and other equipment carried by rifle company soldiers during the period 1966-1967. Soldiers in other U.S. units and in other years probably were equally burdened. During the time I was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in 1965 we may not have carried as much because we came and went from base camp more frequently. Similarly, I didn’t carry quite as much while with the Vietnamese Airborne Division in 1972 because my battalion didn’t move very far. So my list will include what a typical "grunt" of 1966-1967 humped on his back or elsewhere on his body. I should also point out that officers and senior NCO’s didn’t carry as much weight as the enlisted troops, although we had a few lightweight items such as maps, compasses, and flashlights that they didn’t have. As a company commander, I carried a .45 caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds loaded, as well as extra magazines of ammunition. Some non-riflemen, such as mortar men, also packed .45’s. RTO’s carried PRC-25 radios, 26 pounds with battery, as well as spare batteries. Medics carried their aid bags, which probably added about 10 pounds to their loads. Machine gunners were equipped with the M-60 machine-gun, 23 pounds unloaded. The belts of ammo added another 10 to 15 lbs., but most of that was carried by the assistant gunner. Riflemen were armed with the M-16 assault rifle with about a 1 lb. bayonet. The weapon by itself weighed 7.5 lbs; 8.2 lbs. with a full 20 round magazine. If the soldier carried a dozen magazines minimum, that added another 8.4 lbs. He probably had almost a pound of rifle maintenance gear. Grenadiers were armed with the M79 grenade launcher, 5.9 lbs. unloaded, lighter than an M-16, but the ammo was heavier, so that these soldiers might carry as much as 15 lbs. of ammo.

        All the ancillary necessities of life added additional weight. Among those were a steel helmet and liner, canteens of water, heat tabs, insect repellent, water purification tablets, malaria pills, Claymore mines, trip flares, hand grenades, smoke grenades, poncho liner, snap links, spare socks and undershorts and T-shirts (for those who bothered to wear the latter two items), toilet articles and towel, and personal items such as stationary and ball-point pens. C-rations could add considerably to the load, even when resupply came every evening. Entrenching tools were 5 lbs more. Bibles, other reading material, photos of family and friends back in "the world": it all added something more. So would the web gear and rucksack.

        The weapons platoon in A Co. was equipped with one 90 mm rocket launcher and one 81 mm mortar. The TO&E authorized more of these weapons, but their weights and the weight of the ammo precluded carrying any more. Additionally, the availability of field artillery, armed helicopters, and Air Force close air support was rapid and very lethal. The ammo for these weapons was usually distributed among the troops, as were the Claymores and trip flares.

        A very rough estimate of a trooper’s load would be 75 to 90 lbs., depending on his duty assignment. Consider that he humped this load all day, every day, through rain forests, usually in scorching heat and frequently in pouring rain, across flooded rice paddies, and up and down some very steep terrain. I should add, however, that at a point about midway through my tour with A Co., someone up the chain of command recognized the burdens that soldiers were carrying, and decided that it would be a good idea to have everything but the daytime necessities -- weapons, ammo, rations, water, etc. -- sling loaded out by Chinook helicopters every morning and returned every evening. I protested this decision, but to no avail. It meant that we had to be at a suitable place for this operation every day, which resulted in our location being easily detected by the enemy. Further, there was no guarantee that we would get our rucksacks back at the end of the day, because, if something could go wrong, it would go wrong, as happened to A Co. when the pilot dropped our packs into a fire. But that’s another story.

(Author’s note: My appreciation to Tim O’Brien, whose short story "The Things They Carried" provided most of the weights I have included in this essay.)