I have face paint.
Of course, we're always going to camo up.
Your neck, anything exposed skin
that you're not going to put gloves on
or cover your face at all or wear a net gaiter.
This face paint particularly is Australian face paint.
It works great.
It's more of a makeup than it is like our face paint.
This face paint is probably my favorite.
I'm Sgt. Brett Bostick.
I'm an instructor here
at the Jungle Operations Training Center,
and this is everything a soldier would take
on a 72-hour mission in the jungle.
So, there are a lot of items that a soldier's going to need,
but in general, they're going to need
a lot of items to be lightweight, durable,
and they're going to need to get dry quickly.
Right in front of me, I have a ALICE rucksack,
and I have an ALICE load-bearing belt and a rifle.
All right, so this is our Colt M4.
Standard-issue M4 that we are issued right now in the Army.
This is going to be their individual weapon,
not getting into any squad weapons
or any platoon-sized weapons.
This is just their individual rifle they'll carry.
Weapons that we do have in our arsenal,
the M4 is probably the easiest to carry
but does have its limitations, being a little bit longer
than some other, like, subguns that are out there.
Bostick: I personally don't.
I think it's a very suitable weapon for the jungle
in the somewhat size that we have in here now.
That's a little bit harder than you would think,
just with the dirt and the mud
that you're facing all the time in the water.
So keeping it dry and clean as best as possible
is a lot harder than you would think.
All right, so first I'll start on the outside.
There's three small pouches on the small ALICE pack.
In the first pouch, I have just a quick-access
poncho or tarp. Folds up real nice. It's easy.
This is great to pull out
over your head at night to use a red lens,
or if you're trying to build some kind of shelter
or plot on a map
and you're not trying to get wet if it's raining.
This is great to have just easily accessible.
Stretches out big enough to cover about two people.
So pretty big, but it compacts real nice and tight.
Next pouch, I have my survival kit.
All right. And my survival kit,
it's just a little Pelican case.
Something that's sturdy,
it's not going to break under pressure,
and it's going to keep my stuff dry.
Some quick, easy things that I have in my survival kit
is a little handsaw, just for chopping down trees
for if I'm trying to build a shelter
or build a fighting position.
Steel wool and my other fire-starting items.
So your lighter, your batteries,
your ferro rod, stuff like that.
For your 9-volt battery and your steel wool,
it's going to give you a good spark very quickly.
And then your ferro rods, if you get a good,
nice, dry bird's nest of kindling or tinder,
you can throw a nice spark in there.
It's going to catch fairly easy if you can keep it dry.
We do have waterproof matches. I have some right here.
They're just not the best things.
Even though they say they're waterproof,
with the amount of water and moisture we have,
it doesn't actually stay waterproof.
And then I get into water collection,
or water purification, with iodine tablets.
It's always good to have plenty of those,
so you can always purify water
out in the rivers or the rain.
Next, getting into more of your hunting.
So I have fishing line and fishing hooks,
60-pound-test line, and then just small hooks
for the small fish we have out in our rivers.
And then I have a small multitool just for any small cuts
if I happen to lose any of my bigger knives.
And then duct tape. It's always great to have duct tape.
And then lastly, a foil rescue blanket.
It's great to have to warm up,
or in case of emergency you can lay it on the ground
and help you get off the ground
so the heat doesn't get taken away from the ground.
And then it all goes into your nice Pelican case.
Fits up, stays dry, nice and compact.
This next pouch over here,
I have kind of emergency food, extra food,
and a Jetboil.
As you'll see, all my waterproof bags
will be tied down to my bag itself,
just so I can't lose them at night
if I do happen to take them out.
So it's just quick and easy food,
just tuna packets, chicken packets,
very easy to have on hand.
Personally, I could live off this
for 72 hours if I needed to.
Roughly six to eight MREs
you can stretch for that 72-hour mission.
And then lastly in here I have a
small, compact Jetboil
to either boil water, purify water,
or cook any kind of food that I have out there and find.
Now moving into the main compartment.
On top, I have my helmet.
Quick access for any kind of rappelling,
or if we were to get into any kind of firefight
I would pull out my helmet and put it on.
Next, getting into the actual main compartment,
I have two sets of waterproof bags
that are individually tied off.
So if one were to fail, the next one would be there
to actually stop the water.
This is my main living compartment.
My dry clothes, my extra food,
extra water if I need to put it in there,
or my actual sleeping bags,
your poncho, your woobie, anything you want to keep dry.
Or sensitive items. You can put radios in here.
Just something that you don't want to get wet.
Bostick: It's almost impossible.
You're going to get wet almost immediately.
That's why we do bring a separate dry kit in this bag.
It's also tied down to the actual bag itself.
This will be the dry kit that I was talking about.
It's another waterproof bag, so this is triple-protected.
All right, in here I have a set of socks,
another uniform, top and bottom.
So this is what I'll be sleeping in
and doing any kind of night operations
or while I'm in my patrol base at night.
And then a second pair of boots.
These boots, very quick and easy to actually put on.
Put these on at night, and you can walk around
your patrol base so you're not walking around in flip-flops,
like some people do in patrol bases.
And then that's what I have in my dry bag.
Just a civilian dry bag.
Like I said, this is my dry kit.
So if I were to get into my hammock at night,
I would put the dry kit on,
and then I would go to sleep in it.
And if anything were to happen, I would still have boots on,
so I can get up and fight if I needed to.
And then if it was my turn on watch or the night has ended,
I'm going to wake up in the morning,
I'll put my wet clothes back on,
and then you just move throughout the day.
Hopefully they dry.
And then my next pouch over here,
this is my hooch-building or my sleeping setup.
Right now I don't have it,
but you would have a hammock in here or some type of poncho
to actually make an A-frame hooch out of.
Right now I just have my woobie
to actually curl up and sleep underneath my rain fly.
Woobie, it's our military slang term
for just a poncho liner.
It's pretty much just a thick blanket
that keeps you warm at night. Works great out here.
Curling up in your woobie with your nice dry kit on
is definitely what keeps students going.
All right, so here we have
your load-bearing equipment,
your FLC, your TAPs.
Here I've opted to go with
the old-school Vietnam ALICE belt.
Because our current-issued is over the chest,
it actually is very hot.
Doesn't allow cool to get through.
Having stuff on your belt and shoulder straps,
it's actually great for the jungle environment.
Obviously it worked out in Vietnam
for our soldiers out there.
The idea behind this is to carry your mags,
your water, and your first-aid kit on you.
That's your first-line gear.
I'll just start in the front
and work my way around.
So, in the front, I have two small pouches.
In one of them I have a headlamp and then a GPS.
So, this is just your Princeton Tec headlamp
that everybody sees. Red-lens-capable, of course,
'cause you're going to use red lens at night.
It's a whole lot harder to see
under night vision and out with the naked eye.
And then it's also white-light-capable
for any kind of, maybe emergency I need to attend to.
In the next one, I have my VS17 panel
for marking aircraft, marking for casevac or medevac.
Just folds up nice and tight.
So, this is the Garmin 601.
This is the best GPS that I've found
that works out in our jungles out here in Hawaii,
just 'cause we have such major steep terrain
and the signal cell service and FM for comms is so bad.
Your GPS watches don't usually work as well.
They give off bad grids.
The 601 and the 701, the Garmin 401,
all of this model works really great out here
and will give you an accurate grid.
Roughly a new one.
The 601 I think were running, like, $200 to $300,
the 701s are up around the $400 or $500s,
and the 401s, the older model,
probably get $90 to $100.
But it's a great investment,
especially for what we're doing out here.
Next, I have face paint.
Of course, we're always going to camo up.
Your neck, anything exposed,
skin that you're not going to put gloves on
or cover your face at all or wear a net gaiter.
This face paint particularly is Australian face paint
that the Aussies get issued.
It works great.
It's more of a makeup than it is like our face paint.
It's got sun protection in it.
Doesn't wipe off easy, but you get one good makeup wipe,
it'll come off really good.
So this face paint is probably my favorite that I've used.
Recently we had some Australian Army soldiers come out.
We did an instructor swap with them.
Just tools of the trade.
We traded what we like, and they traded what they like,
and just choose and play what we like.
Just because you're wearing a camouflage uniform
and you're going to be fighting other trained soldiers
that are going to be trained to spot
out bright-colored skin or any kind of flashy objects.
So actually blending into the environment,
it's going to allow you to stay hidden
and continue and succeed in your mission.
Next in the front I have two mag pouches.
They both hold three mags each.
So I'm going to have six mags on my body,
and then I would have one in the rifle.
So a full combat load of seven mags.
It's super easy to store.
They all fit perfectly right here. It's super easy.
30.
If you are going out with a squad or a bigger element,
you can make speedball bags, so you can stuff extra mags,
enough for rounds in people's rucksacks,
and it could be quick-deploy as needed.
But on an individual soldier,
you're taking combat load out, seven mags.
Next I'm getting into my water.
So I have,
these are just the 1-quart canteens that we get issued
and canteen pouches.
And then in one of the pouches, I have a canteen cup.
Just a standard-issue metal canteen cup.
It's great for boiling water.
If I were to have my Jetboil,
I could set this in a fire, purify water,
or just make coffee in the morning for morale.
After that, in the back,
this is actually a 2-quart canteen pouch,
but I'm using it as my individual first-aid kit
slash my survival kit holder.
So I showed you my main survival kit
that I would have in my ruck,
but I also have a smaller survival kit
that goes in my actual personal equipment
just in case I lost my ruck for some reason.
And then that's also tied down.
Just nice little waterproof kit.
Same items that we talked about before.
And then, tied down as well,
I have my first-aid kit.
Just in case this gets dropped out,
it's always tied down to me.
This is just your normal first-aid kit
that any soldier will get issued.
One tourniquet. Folds up nice and neat.
You're going to have needle D for chest decompression,
pressure bandages, cones for your eyes
if you get your eye poked out.
Just small stuff to apply self-aid with,
just so you can get yourself to the next role of care.
Off to the side right here,
this is stuff that I would actually have in my shirt top.
So in my pockets in my top,
I'd have extra face paint, just in case I run out.
I would have map markers.
I carry two blacks, so this is what I would write with,
and then the white marker, which you can erase with.
So the main reason that a soldier would carry markers
or paper on a combat mission in the jungle
is to do your land navigation
or any kind of admin notes for the leadership out there.
If you have stuff on there that you don't want
the enemy to see, you can write it on there
and then erase it off as well.
Or if you make a mistake, you can erase it as well.
So, my map right here,
it is our map for our training area out here.
It's cut in half, and it's on front and back
of this lamination paper.
So I can fold it up nice and tight and put it in a pocket.
It's great to keep it waterproof
and keep it from getting ruined.
Next, I have pace beads. All right.
So, once again for land navigation or for patrolling,
every 100 meters you take, you move one bead down.
It represents 100 meters. There's nine of these here.
So when this is 900 meters you've walked,
once you've walked 1,000 meters,
you move the top one down, indicating you've walked 1,000,
and then you reset your bottom nine.
Now I've moved 1,000 meters.
And you just keep repeating the process.
In 2023, with all our technology,
just signal, like I was talking about with the GPS,
it's a big thing, especially in the jungle,
because you're not getting the best signal.
So using the old-school map, protractor,
and your pace beads to do land navigation
is probably the best way.
And having that overall
land-navigation skill is going to let you succeed.
And then next I have two types of compasses.
This is just the basic compass that our soldiers get issued.
It's a military lensatic compass.
It has both mils and degrees on it
for navigating or calling for fire if you need to.
It also has a ruler for your maps.
This is one of those Northern Hemisphere compasses.
So if you didn't know,
these compasses only work in Northern Hemisphere.
It's because of the way the magnetic field sits.
If you try to use it in the Southern Hemisphere,
it would give you a false reading.
So they make global compasses.
They can be used all across the world.
So this is one made by Silva.
It works great. It's got a magnifying glass,
it has your protractor built into it,
it's got your rulers,
and it can do anything our compasses can do,
but it can be used across the world.
And it fits really compact in a pocket.
It's probably my favorite.
It's what I use and carry out here.
All right.
And then my overall knife,
my fighting knife, my survival knife.
This one's made by Toor,
but just a fixed blade
that can do any kind of daily general work.
You can kill any kind of animals with this,
you can build any kind of shelters,
or you can fight with it if you need to.
I teach our dispatch class,
our traps and snares class,
so harvesting animals.
So we dispatch chickens, part of our school.
I use this for actually doing the dispatch
with the guillotine method of taking the chicken's life
or actually gutting and quartering the chicken.
And then also I teach the traps and snares class.
So building traps and snares and shelters, stuff like that.
Just great, sharp, daily-use knife.
And having a fixed blade allows you to hammer into it.
So it's not going to break,
like folding knives would at the hinges.
So having a fixed blade is great.
So, most ferro rods come with a striker
to actually throw sparks.
But you can use the back of your knife
to throw sparks as well.
So having a good fixed blade
allows you to start any kind of fire like that.
And then they make all types of sheaths.
This one's just a leather sheath,
or they have the Kydex plastic ones.
But I like to tie down my sheath,
because I have lost knives before.
Because the sheath just comes off your belt for some reason.
The jungle just takes stuff from you.
Right now, my knife's, I don't have a lanyard for my knife,
but if I were to go out on a mission
or I would go out patrolling,
I would tie down my knife as well.
Everything I've talked about and covered
is everything a soldier should or would carry
on a 72-hour mission in a jungle environment.