Had an amazing training event this weekend with an excellent group of strong Christian men. Just wanted to throw up a simple personal AAR to help you learn from my mistakes.
First off, I over-packed like a mother fucker. I was trying to take a bunch of medical shit out that I probably didn’t need. (Wait, I thought you needed a full level one trauma center of equipment otherwise, why worry about medical?!) This ties in further to my needing to rework my kit.
The UW Gear chest rig is definitely a solid option for sure. But for my AO a belt kit is definitely a good add-on. I can run a smaller 4 mag chest rig (probably a swamp fox mini chest rig) with my radio and a small bleeder kit) and run a belt kit with an additional 4 mags plus full IFAK, and sustainment gear in a buttpack. This will pair nicely with a medium alice with more long-term sustainment and my medic pack insert. This will allow me to ditch the alice if needed and still have water and enough stuff for an overnight mission if a FRAGO happens during a mission.
I was trying to think like light infantry instead of like a guerilla. We can’t let our previous experiences with full support (like temperature-controlled ERs with fluorescent lights) cloud our judgment of what we will have to do in a partisan environment. If you haven’t spent time in the field, I can expect you do not understand how different it can be. But that’s what training is for, isn’t it? But oh well, some just post on the internet because they like to hear themselves talk and are convinced of their own self-importance. Maybe that’s why they don’t ever train, they’ve “been there” and “done that” and don’t want to be humbled or check their ego at the door.
For those of you that do train, I hope you can learn from my mistakes and save yourself the headache. We are here to lift each other up through information. What is the biggest takeaway you have from your own personal failures?