Starvin Larry

I’ve helped many people set up their combat equipment over the years, from family to students to fellow Marines. Earlier I wrote an article entitled “Priorities of Purchase: Progressively Building a Rifleman’s Kit on a Budget“, in which I laid out the order in which an aspiring rifleman should purchase gear. In that article I started with what I call the rifleman’s essentials, the bare minimum equipment necessary for a rifleman to carry on his person. Today I want to go a bit deeper into these essentials, listing why they are important and how I recommend you carry them.

Ammunition

This is the first and most obvious of the rifleman’s essentials. A rifleman, who carries a rifle, must carry additional ammunition for that rifle. This ammunition must be loaded into magazines (or stripper clips, if you’re running a vintage bolt gun) so that the rifle may be reloaded…