Sipsey Street Irregulars: Praxis: Packboards And Cargo Shelves

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Praxis: Packboards And Cargo Shelves

Packboards were unit items and not individual issue. In some cases they were used to carry the barely man-portable radios of the day for artillery forward observers. Combat medical platoons used them to carry supplies necessary to establish aid stations close to the front. Communications soldiers would carry and rapidly deploy spools of telephone line to link front line positions. Engineers would carry demolition supplies and pioneer tools to support their mission. But in WW II the packboards were most widely used by units habitually operating in mountainous terrain where motor transport couldn’t easily move.

See also my post from 2009: Praxis: Mission Loads -- Sustaining Light Infantry on "Shank's Mare." The Packboard, the ALICE Cargo Frame and the Universal Load Carrying Sling

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: The last war fought without on demand resupply was Korea. The lesson of Korea and WW2 is that full auto weapons and "hi cap" full and semiauto weapons demand ammunition resupply at such a high volume, that it is nearly impossible for an infantry unit to fight for more than three days without MASSIVE resupply. In WW1 the average ammunition combat expenditure was 200 rounds per man per day with five shot bolt action rifles, or ten thousand rounds per fifty man platoon. In WW2 with the advent of semi and full auto weapons in the hands of the infantry the basic "assault load" for a ww2 USMC landing force (platoon) was 250000 rounds! With the "human wave assaults" by the North Koreans and Chinese that figure doubled. In Vietnam it actually stayed unchanged, but only because of better training and "on demand" resupply. My point? YOU CANNOT RUN LOGISTICS FROM A BACK PACK FOR MORE THAN THREE DAYS. The Airborne tried it in WW2 and got their ass handed to them every time they tried to do more (ever hear of "a bridge too far"?) The "Marauders" tried to do it in Burma with miles long mule trains, and almost starved to death(and repeatedly ran out of ammunition which lead to repeated "bare minimum" airdrops ) in the LESS than 90 days they spent behind enemy lines. AND. Remember that the Japanese had almost no air support in 1944. This is another ridiculous militia fantasy that needs to be killed with fire.---Ray; February 17, 2016 at 1:38 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Praxis: Packboards And Cargo Shelves

1 comment:

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