We Were Soldiers Collection

[MagnumForce]

About 10 years ago I bought all of the M56 gear from 'We Were Soldiers'. A few hundred M56 Ammo Pouches, about 80 canteen covers, harnesses, buttpacks, belts, etc.

There were about 10 or so M56 pieces that had holes, burn marks, fake blood stained on them. I ended up giving those away to reenactors locally. Most of the generic M56 pouches that I had I sold in bulk to dealers.

Interesting though, was that in many of the pouches were trinkets and misc stuff. A pack of vintage matches from a grocery store. A map from a training area. A piece of paper with names on it and items that failed during uniform inspection. I don't think that any of that was used in the movie, I think they were things left in those pouches in the 60s and 70s from when guys turned in their gear, and 40 years later when I'm digging through pouches, I find them! I kept those separate in a small box.

Oh wow!! Did you happen to keep any of it?

 

[AaronHorrocks]

As far as the M56 gear, that got put into my general stock. However, since I got soo much all at once, I was able to go through the pouches, separate them by 2nd Pattern and 3rd Pattern, manufacturer, and even date. And then, pair them together. So any pouches that I paired together, I was able to keep. Those were certainly from the movie. I also used some to create some "early vietnam web sets" that I made.

And the box of trinkets, I still have somewhere.

 

[p51]

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Interesting. I would suspect this is an original flight suit as I don't know of anyone making L2-series flight suits as reproductions. If anyone made repros of them, maybe one of the Japanese companies who make some really good cold-war era stuff could have made them, but my money is on original as the smaller sizes aren't tough to find even these days.
Really neat stuff, it's great to see this in the hands of a collector. I can't watch the scenes of the 'death notifications' to this day (having had to do it myself on active duty; it's one of the few things the war movies get right as to how the families react), but I always loved the scene of the first manifest call in the middle of the night near the drop towers at Benning (it doesn't matter when wheels go up, the first manifest call will always be in the middle of the night) and the scenes around Benning. I recognized a lot of places from my time there courtesy of Uncle Sam...