Shelter Halves. Tent Buddies. Inspections. Home in the Field.The lowly Shelter Half. It meant you had to have a buddy. Sure, you could make a. lean to (and they did show you how to do that in Basic AND AIT) but that was rare. It was you and a “buddy”sharing a Shelter Half. "So let's start with a comment I made on another thread:

Hey Top, that first frame of the cartoon brought back a memory from Tiger Land at Ft. Polk. I am a city kid. So when me and my other half of the shelter tent (who was from Detroit) made our tent. We dug the little trench like they taught us, and put sandbags around the base. The DI came over and asked where we were from. We told him. He said: "It figures. Only City Slickers would dig the trench and put sandbags on the downhill side of the slope. When the rains came we found out why he was chuckling.Yep.

All of you born in the country kids are probably laughing. (I know you are!) In the inner city where I lived, tents were made of blankets over table tops and chairs...indoors. Oh, sure, once in a while you slept in your backyard, half way from the back porch to the shed and garbage cans. But as soon as it rained...back in the house you went. So for me, and that kid from Detroit, setting up a Shelter Half was a Virgin Experience. And when two inches of water flooded the bottom of our perfectly assembled tent- water trapped by our own preparations- we learned a little bit about where to put your shelter half, and how to protect it from getting wet, damp, or soggy.

In Basic and in AIT, for some strange reason known only to the Army and Drill Sergeants- you had to have inspections of not only your "Tent", but how you laid out your ground gear: blanket, bed roll, and mat. If that wasn't enough- well, you had to lay your mess kit out for display. Those tins better shine! Another lesson, don't use Brasso to make your mess kit, knife, fork, and spoon glisten in the sunlight- your tummy will thank you later. I have met a lot of Vets who used Shelter Halves in Korea, and Vietnam- and none ever told me a story about inspecting their shelter halves or mess kits in the field. Bunkers were a much more likely shelter for them. And the Brass left them mostly to their own devices.
What Shelter Halves did do, is to teach you how to work as the smallest team possible- two soldiers. Just two. You had to work together. You had to plan where to put your shelter half, who gets which side, and how deep a trench you should dig around it- if you even needed one.In wet weather, setting up shelter halves in the rain...well, we have all been there. Same with setting them up in the cold...where they are stiff as boards, and hard to work with. And in the heat...well, you set them up, and slept outside. LOL

Last, and probably most important, is you got to know your Shelter Half buddy. You had to wake him up for Guard Duty, two hours later, he had to wake you up. At the end of the duty day, after chow, you sat and chatted outside your shelter half. But at nighttime, you sometimes talked. I mean talked.

Dreams came out to light. What was your future going to be, how is your Mom, did you play sports in High School ?Believe me everyone made the Team, if not All Conference- until... "I blew my knee out!” We were much better at telling you how good we were at sports …than we probably actually were. LOL And your girl. If you had one, you talked about her. How perfect she was, how lucky you were. Pictures were shared. I remember one guy who wrote my girl (stealing her address from one of her letters I kept in a plastic sandwich bag) to tell her that: a) she was drop dead gorgeous. And b) He had never heard a man talk about his girl with such sincere loving comments.He did hint that if she ever dropped me, he was available. Jody, right in the tent with me.

In AIT, a Shelter Half buddy cried on my shoulder as he told me how his Mother passed while he was home from Basic. I couldn't imagine losing your Mom when you were only 18 years old. His Mom was his world - as most of them are. The next morning he told me: "Thanks for listening. You aren't going to tell anyone I cried are you?”
No. No one snitches on someone missing their Mother.

In Germany, on Reforger - I had the same Shelter Half buddy for the whole eighty days or so. We acted like an old married couple by the end of that exercise. In fact, the Platoon called us: "The Odd Couple." Two straight guys trying to figure out how to live together. One time we got so mad at each other we put duct tape down the middle of the shelter half, and hung mosquito netting to split the tent in two. That lasted two nights...we apologized, forgave, and moved on. LOL
I showed him my girl's letters...and let him read them. He showed me his girl's letters and let me read them. He even showed me some pictures of his Girl that my girl would have never posed for. Or at least my girl would have had more clothes on. LOL And so the lowly Shelter Half taught me about life, friendship, and how little you really need. Because that shelter half, after just a week in the field...was home.