Oh hell, yeah. This is the best idea the Overlords have had in a while: Kit Up! is Military.com’s new gadget blog, devoted to “the stuff you weren’t issued but that you couldn’t have done without during your military life.“
Written by ginormous Iraq vet Eric Daniel, the site checks out “the items that made things bearable during a deployment or that allowed you to accomplish your mission. Maybe your gear even saved your life. Kit Up can be new or old, expensive or cheap. It just needs to have mattered to you.“
Today’s samples include “Grunt Wonder Tape” and a “Limb-Saving Watchband.”
This watchband saved my wrist from being split in two during a high seas covert ship boarding. We were attempting to board a vessel carrying illegal cargo during the most unpleasant sea conditions… As the seas began to swell up we were stuck bellow the curve of the hull and were pushed up into the vessel. When this happened my arm was pinned between the console railing of the RIHB and the hull of the vessel. Had it not been for this watchband my wrist(arm) would have been split between the two bones… This band differers from many others in that it is a single piece of nylon that wraps around the wrist twice and is secured with Velcro. Others only use an inch or so of Velcro to secure the band or include plastic rings where the band loops through to tie back to itself — both of which are far from being really safe. Heck, I’ve been known to take a $692 watch off of the metal band and use one of these babys instead!
Steven Doran has a list that may be of use http://www.survival.com/deployment.htm but never being in that part of the world myself I can not judge the quality of his advice but from my armchair it sounds about right:)
Has anyone tried revision sawfly sunglasses? I love these– they look like oakleys, but the frames are SUPER flexible. I shot a lens that was scratched up from 7 meters with a shotgun w/. #9 shot and it didnt fail. The big advantage I see is the frames are much more durable than oakleys– my last OEF tour I wore the same set the whole time (the ones that the lens got scratched up) but the previous tour I went thru 3 pairs of Oakley m-frames 2 broke in normal wear/tear, 1 was disentegrated when I got blown up by a RPG.