A New Zealand Army soldier reveals every piece of gear he would take on a 72-hour mission. Sam, a bombardier serving in the New Zealand Army's 16th Field Regiment, asked us not to use his full name for operational-security reasons.
While much of Sam's field gear resembles that carried by US service members, he shared some terms that many Americans may not be familiar with, such as "hoochie" and "scroggin."
In November 2023, the New Zealand Army participated in the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center training exercise hosted by the US Army's 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii.
While much of Sam's field gear resembles that carried by US service members, he shared some terms that many Americans may not be familiar with, such as "hoochie" and "scroggin."
In November 2023, the New Zealand Army participated in the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center training exercise hosted by the US Army's 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii.
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00:00 I call it a veil or like a micro ghillie and it essentially breaks up the
00:05 triangles of your shoulder line your head there and that the human eye tends
00:08 to pick up. My name's Bombardier Sam I'm with the New Zealand Army with 16
00:12 field regiment as a joint terminal attack controller and this is what I
00:16 take on a 72-hour patrol.
00:19 What we get here is the the modular assault rifle light
00:26 it's just a 5.56 assault rifle we've got an ACOG and then a red dot on the top
00:33 we've got a PEC 15 which is our laser and then we've also got pop-up iron sights.
00:41 What do you have sort of wrapped around it there what's all that green stuff?
00:45 It's just it's just a wrap to sort of break up the shape of the rifle
00:52 essentially if you're operating in close quarters or in close proximity if you
00:58 just had a standard black rifle it would catch the eye and you're more
01:03 likely to get detected essentially. Here we've got the helmet it's got the MBG
01:09 mount it's got a red light IR strobe and then a counterweight for the night
01:15 vision you could wear it all day long it's not too bad you might get a sore
01:19 neck after a wee while but here we've got the battle belt I've got a football
01:25 gameplay kind of thing and I can just quick reference that it's just got
01:29 permanent information and then there well here I got like a like a CAS brief
01:32 so close air support brief and I'll just have there if I needed a reference it or
01:37 sort of fill it out on the run I don't always have the time to pull out a
01:40 notebook and I can just quickly scribble something down on it.
01:44 Standard K-bar knife. A GPS just chuck it on your on your wrist just for a quick
01:50 reference. Individual first aid kit so this is just for me only and then I can
01:57 whoever if I get injured they can just quickly pull it off and get to whatever
02:04 material needs. So I've got a extra tourniquet, I've got Israeli bandage and
02:11 then we got our chest seals so if you get shot in the chest or something like
02:15 that. Obviously like you're not a medic but like you have a lot of first aid
02:19 training right? Yeah we have like upgrade upgrade medical courses so like a combat
02:26 combat lifesavers course so you just get a little bit extra training. So like just
02:31 basic combat medical care? Yeah it's just just a bit more than what you would get
02:35 taught just out of basic training pretty much yeah. Here just got night vision so
02:41 just try and keep that on you the whole time. Ideally not in your bag so if you
02:47 forget it or leave it then you can't operate at night. Now does that attach to
02:52 your helmet? Yep.
02:59 It just attaches like that and then just folds down. And here another extra water
03:07 bottle trying to keep at least a liter on you. More water, a bit of rope and then a
03:18 pruning saw for cutting brush and that kind of thing and that's just tethered
03:21 to me so I don't lose it. Well predominantly we operate in the
03:25 southwest Pacific kind of area so a lot of our operations or previous operations
03:31 are all conducted a lot of the time in the jungle or the bush. Just an extra
03:36 magazine and then a grenade pouch. Just five mags on us and then the extra
03:41 mags will be in an extra bag so like the grab bag or something like that.
03:45 Standard issue body armor. On the front here we've got extra magazines we've got
03:51 our ATAC or essentially we can do all our mapping and all our connectivity off
03:57 this. We can send data missions through radios and that kind of thing like that.
04:02 We've got a push to talk so talking on the radio so we can operate up to four
04:08 different channels on this so talking to lots of different people. Got a
04:18 dump pouch. To my right hand side we've just got different books we can
04:24 reference so this is a like a J-4 or joint fires so this gives us all the
04:29 information that we might need on the run and we can reference it if we need
04:33 to conduct some kind of mission with naval or air or ground. Just an extra
04:40 notebook for CAS briefs and that kind of thing. It's just laminated and then
04:46 we go over it with sandpaper just so we can ride on it in the rain with pencil.
04:50 Just a back panel for extra stuff whatever you might need and then
04:57 radio. No comms, no bombs. Yeah comms are critical you can't do
05:04 anything out. Yeah but isn't it tough in some jungle environments? Yeah for
05:08 sure but we have techniques and tactics and stuff to mitigate that kind of stuff.
05:14 On the left hand side here we've just got a IR pointer. If I wanted to talk to
05:19 like a UAV or a fighter or something that's coming to strike a target I can
05:24 essentially rope them around like this and then lasso them onto whatever is
05:29 striking. Compass. It's got a tritium in it so you can see through night you don't
05:35 actually have to charge it with like an extra light to be able to illuminate the
05:39 illuminators. So this is a special reconnaissance pack that's essentially a 72
05:45 hour loadout. Essentially how the packs configured is, we like to have all our
05:49 equipment on the exterior of the pack so we're not constantly opening the pack
05:53 and digging into the middle of it. On the top of the pack here is our claymore pouch.
05:57 Obviously we put our claymore in there. In conjunction to that we'd have a,
06:03 call it a veil or like a micro ghillie and it essentially breaks up the
06:08 triangles of your shoulder line, your head there, that the human eye tends to
06:12 pick up. This would be utilized when you're in the observation post or
06:17 conducting a close target reconnaissance. To the right here we have a,
06:22 we call it a huchi. A huchi is essentially a TP tarp that we
06:28 utilize in the field to keep the rain off our heads. On the pack itself we like
06:32 to keep all our water located on it so we're not drinking the water from our
06:37 webbing just if we have to go on the run or some sort, we're not drinking all the
06:43 water that's already on us. On the side here we just got wet weather jacket.
06:48 Wet weather jacket and wet weather pants. We try to avoid wearing them as much as
06:57 possible because the rustling and the noise can give away your position. In
07:02 this pouch here we've got a jet boil, gas. What's that for? Just heating up your
07:10 food pretty much, hot brews, coffees, those kind of things. Basically a morale tool
07:16 to keep the morale up. Turns on.
07:21 There's not too many good things in the field so anything that can sort of cheer
07:25 you up. In the front here we have our MREs. What we like to do is we'll break
07:33 them up into three packs essentially. We'll have one that's just full of the
07:39 meat packs, one's just full of like your scroggins, your skittles and that kind of
07:45 thing and then we also have a rubbish bag just keep everything clean and try
07:49 and reduce our sign. What is scrogg? Scroggin is essentially, we basically
07:56 grab all the the nuts and berries and all that kind of stuff and we'll take
08:00 them out of their packaging and we'll chuck them into one bag just to reduce
08:04 all the the rubbish and that kind of thing. It's just easier instead of
08:10 having to break into a new pack every time. Yeah why is it important to be
08:15 accountable for your own trash in the field, your own rubbish in the field?
08:19 Essentially it gives away sign and it can give the trackers or enemy sort of
08:25 bit of a intelligence picture to sort of who's operating in the area. Got our
08:32 thermal mat here and then when we're operating we can just sit behind our pack like so
08:37 and then we have access to everything that's on our pack. So it's just like a
08:42 seat cushion. It's a seat cushion and it keeps you keeps your butt warm. It's just
08:46 been cut and taped back together just so it folds nicely. At the top of the top of
08:52 the pack we have a essentially a grab bag. The grab bag is essentially contained
08:58 of all like mission critical equipment so your radios, any comm sec material,
09:06 optics that you don't want to get into the enemy's hands and essentially we
09:12 have it in the grab bag as just so if we have to go on the run we're not carrying
09:15 a massive pack and it's there good to go. You can see that the the straps on the
09:22 outside just so we can grab it and pull it out. We've got our mission
09:27 essential material so we've got our thermal night optic and our day
09:34 optic. So it's called a GemLR. It's a thermal optic and it also has a
09:40 day TV mode and we can look out super far with these essentially, a lot further
09:46 than your just sort of normal optics. So I'm built into it. There's also a IR
09:52 pointer essentially. It's a laser that's invisible to the naked eye and that can
09:56 only be seen at night with night vision goggles. So if you're if you're marking
10:01 targets or something if you've got guys that are or an aircraft in the overhead
10:05 you can actually laze the target or IR point the target and then he can get
10:11 quickly correlated onto it. And then some warm gears to say if we get cold at
10:17 night. That looks pretty comfortable. Yeah it's good to go. Thermals, jocks, socks
10:22 you probably don't want to look at those. Just pretty standard stuff. What are jocks?
10:27 Jocks, underwear, I think you call them underwear. Yeah. And then we have our
10:35 sleeping bag. So here we've got essentially our sleeping bag set up. It's
10:40 a waterproof liner that stops the bag getting wet. A lot of the time
10:46 we'll just operate with just this and we depending on the tech scenario we won't
10:52 actually deploy the the hoochie itself. And then again we like to order it and
11:00 how we're going to use it so when we're jumping into our bag when we're soaking
11:03 wet we try and avoid that so we'll have dry equipment so we can jump in.
11:10 So take your wet pants off, chuck some dry pants on and that's just a standard
11:15 issue jungle bag. And that's everything I take on a 72 hour mission.
11:19 So is it a Ruck? Yeah Ruck, a pack Ruck. We like to call it a pack so yeah.
11:27 So it's different you don't ever refer to it as a Ruck? If we referred to it as a
11:31 Ruck everyone would know what it is.
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