Ice Cream

Ice Cream

Since I enlisted in the national guard I have been issued new or current equipment exactly three times, shortly after September 11th, then just before my last trip to Iraq. The first set of gear I was issued was straight out of Viet-Nam. Seriously it was stuff that would later be used on the set of We Were Soldiers. Cotton harnesses, old school ruck sacks and the like. The National Guard gets new equipment right after the Marine Corps. From tanks to uniforms we are always a couple of decades behind.
I remember talking to a friend who had been active in the 7th Infantry. He had time to serve a term, go to college, get a degree, hang out for a couple of years, enlist in the national guard, serve his term, reenlist and get out again, before the packs he was issued on the active side showed up in the national Guard supply room.
Here we are, getting new, up to date modern equipment. Packs, and duffels, bags and bags of stuff. From body armor to fire resistant jumpsuits it kept coming. Cleaning kits, and multi-tools, flash lights and gloves, it just kept coming. Piles of gear and they just kept growing. Like a kid in a candy store I just loaded up on toys galore for the men who love guns. In rough numbers the average soldier carries about ten grand in stuff on him when he goes out on patrol. Some might carry thirty to fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment. When you consider what a poor grunt got issued in WWII and all the way to Grenada it couldn’t have been more than a couple grand, and in WWII maybe as little as a couple hundred dollars.
In the middle of all this largess of the army a thought leaps fully into my mind. This is ice cream. In the show Band of Brothers they are waiting on the airfield. There have been all sorts of false starts over the months, then they deliver ice cream. Just before the big jump on the night of 5 June 1944 the guy had ice cream delivered. I love gear, but just like ice cream there are strings attached.