Outfitting the troops: Army sizes up today's soldiers

[Pete]

Outfitting the troops: Army sizes up today's soldiers

http://fayobserver.com/articles/2012/03/11/1162288?sac=fo.military

"The president may be talking about downsizing the military, but the size of the average soldier is growing.

At the Camp Shelby training base near Hattiesburg, Miss., measuring sticks and high-tech body scans are being used on 1,000 servicemen and women........."

And you thought those vintage civil war uniforms looked like kid's cloths.

[mojaveman]

When I joined the Army at 17 in the summer of '80 I was 6'2" but only weighed about 150lbs. For the first few years I sometimes experienced difficulties when looking for clothing because I had to wear small long and they weren't always available. I gained weight later and eventually wore medium long. I'm certian that some others had problems too especially the midgets and giants. In my basic training company we had a soldier who was about 5'1" and another who was about 7' tall and also was our guidon bearer during the entire training cycle.

[Mustang Man]

When I went to a military surplus store the other day I tried to find a medium long set of multicams. A lot of the common sizes I found were LG, XL and even XXL. I found my size but it seemed like they didn't keep much of M's in stock but had plenty of the larger sizes available.