that is quite a load! Good one, but how was the weight?
Ah, I was young and fit - so it didn’t seem all that heavy at the time. Being with the grunts, you were handed additional loads to carry besides your own stuff - mortar rounds, machinegun ammo, etc.
My weapon was an M-14 and all the extra ammo was to feed it when everybody else had the M-16. I was never tempted to have the M-16 when I saw how bad those things worked. My scam was to tell my company commander that we “didn’t have the M-16 in artillery yet” - and when I went back to my battery for my mail “the grunts want me to keep my ‘14”.
Had an army buddy tell me that “theM-14 was too heavy for Vietnam”. I told him that I wished he’d said something while he was there - “I’d have sent a big Marine to hold the rifle up for him”.
It was a while until he spoke to me again!