Thanks noname762.
Something else I just noticed in re-reading my post, although it is a four day plan, it is a 48 hours in the op/field condition plan fine tuned for those of us for work during the week and would be doing training and whatnot on long weekends.
Additional food for the feast meal is generally not something you carry on your back, it is at your main camp, safehouse, vehicles or the commercial establishments you will eat at (and no, I am not above stopping at a restaurant in the middle of an op.) If you are living really primitive, it is the stuff you stripped out of your MREs combine with maybe a game animal or fish you got out in the boonies.
A couple more issues involve the possible upsetting of your sleep schedule.
There are some pretty good instant coffees out there now that come in really compact packages and help work as a stimulant. Bad news, they often act as a laxative too. (back to the idea of not having a big meal still in your system while on the patrol). Coffee is definitely a must have on that day one morning before you head out where there are no more restrooms.
Another issue is to force sleep when it is possible, perhaps controversial with some here, but a small bottle of high octane drinkable alcohol. Not for when you are needing to make any important decisions, but when you want to numb things a bit and beat down the jitters so you can rest.
On field ops with my old unit, I limited people to one shot each. Right after a long hard "day" of running and gunning, and or work, a shot before turning in seemed to be a major morale booster and got people sleeping like babies right off the bat. That is especially the case if they have been running on caffeine and energy stuff for a while.
There is something definitely relaxing and de-stressing about that moment you break out the bottle for the team when you are all covered with an inch or so of cold ass mud in the back of an APC, dark, tired as hell, the smell of diesel and sweat permeating the air. Moving your feet every few moments to keep them from freezing into the mud on the floor of the track, and then it's time to pass the bottle. None of that "miller time back at the base", nope, we're hitting it right here so the ride back does not seem so damn long and dark. That's when the troop bitching drops to zero, the pride starts to sink in and the look on your boy's faces is "yeah, we got this handled".
