"The Major returning them had a great laugh as did I because I could still even read the tag it was that unfaded, unlike his hair colour he noted! It's a great place to bring back old memories that front counter!!"
- Memory lane. I have rucksack kit lists going back a few decades, and I am amazed at how simple, light, non-bulky, cheap , and FEW were the items in our Rucksack, Universal, C2 (what is now known erroniously as thr '64 pattern ruck) and/or our Cargo Pack 1964 (the one with the 'tump line').
Black Betty's (Mattress, Pneumatic): good for NOT feeling rocks underneath you. Good for keeping you off the snow. Good for rafting. Bad for noise of inflation - and time to inflate. Bad for having 15 mph air currents in the bellows: in extreme cold, the air mattress turns into a 'heat sink', or actually an external body inter-cooler. Here is how it works: Your body trunk warms the air under you. The warm air you just made then rotates down the matress and the cold air under your feet rotates up to be warmed by your body. this sucking of heat out of you continues for the entire 96 minutes you get to actually sleep on your air mattress that night...
On the other hand, if you are in a hurry to leave (like, always?) just pull the plug, unlike the Therma-rest.
I still own three. And a 64 cargo pack. And a C2 Ruck, old windpants, X1951 fishnet undershirt, and the Cdn Pattern wool shirt, battledress, button stick, Case Ammunition Magazine 1964 (C2 Bra), etc.
I DO miss not keeping the khaki greatcoat, and passing up the 1972 offer to the the sheepskin jackets at 15 bucks each. They were paying me about $7.35 a day at the time, so the money I made during the weekend 3.5 inch Rocket Launcher shoot would have been spent all on a coat I THOUGHT I would never use...
Oh well.
Tom
25?! Let me guess, you sleep on all 25, and if there's a pebble under the bottom one it feels like you're sleeping on a bowling ball 
