WWII US M1928 Haversack Assembly Guide

Hello guys, welcome back to the channel. Today we're going to start a small series on the M1928 Havoc Sack like you see here. We're going to do two different little mini-series basically. One's going to be about the Havoc Sack, the different pieces of equipment it has on it, and how to basically set it up as you're seeing now in front of you. And then the second one will be how to do a bigger version of the Havoc Sack set up for marching, which has the full packed hail and tent and everything mounted to it. So let's make a start. Right guys, so here you have laid out the basic parts of the Havoc Sack. So obviously in the middle here you've got the Havoc Sack itself, then you've got the meat can pouch, you've got the M7 scabbard which is used for the M1 bayonet which I'll be using as a pointy stick. Here you've got the packed hail complete with its leather strap that fits it to the Havoc Sack. Over this side you've got an M1910 T-handle shovel inside the M1910 cover. And here you've got an M1943 or M43 entrenchment tool with the M43 cover on that. Now for the purposes of this video we're going to be mounting the M43, not the M1910, and we'll be taking this out of the picture because this will be used for the marching Havoc Sack, not the basic Havoc Sack loadout that we're doing here. Right here we go then, so let's start with the actual main Havoc Sack itself. So as I've mentioned before people think these are a bag but they are not a bag, they are a series of flaps and straps that kind of hold themselves together and you get what is sort of like a bag. So let's go over the features of the Havoc Sack here whilst it's done up. At the front you'll see it's got a fitting here, or the top I should say. This is where you fit your cover for your e-tool. On the sides you'll see that there's these four cutouts here, that's for use for attaching the meat can pouch. We'll show you this all by the way as we get going down. If I lift the cover over you get to see how it is really just a series of flaps and not a bag. So you've got a flap on each side like so and you see on one side you've got a strap and on the other side you've got the attaching buckle for said strap and you've got this middle section here which is for all intents and purposes the bottom and the front of the Havoc Sack. So inside this you see where I've got my finger now, that's where you feed the straps through into the buckle to give yourself a bit of a security and you open that down and you can see the Havoc Sack in its entirety. So it's basically made out of a main middle section here with the belts and everything fit to the central flap and then the cover. Right now with the Havoc Sack turned over we can show you the details on the back. So let's start with the suspender section. You see it's got a full set of suspenders fit as part of it, you can't remove them. They'll be used to attach it either to your pistol belt or your cartridge belt. You can also use them to wear as a backpack by fitting the buckles down here to the D-ring you can see here where there's one on each side that are attached to this central flap. Now them D-rings can pop through these little gaps here that you have, these cutouts. Now these cutouts that go all the way across the length of it here are for fitting the pack towel cover. So we won't be worrying about them at the minute but they will be used to pop these D-rings through. So I'll just show you how that works. So basically guys all you have to do is get this little D-ring here and if you put it through sort of sideways like so and then you do the same on the other side like so. That then is going to give you the back end to have something to clip to. So if you're wearing it as a backpack for example you'd have that clipped sort of like so. We'll show that in more detail later but you want to have them set up with the D-rings like that before we start putting this together and packing it all up. So whilst that's flat we'll just get that out of the way. Right the next part we're going to look at is the part you want to be fitting to the haversack first. So here we've got a M1943 E-tool cover. You see it's a very simple little design. If I put my pointy stick away, spin it over you see on the back that's got this wire hanger. I don't know if that's actually called a wire hanger but that's what I'm often known as. This is a type 2 one so you can see you can adjust that to be in three different positions depending on the height you want your E-tool to be at. The earlier version of the 43 did not have the adjustments. Right so let me just show you how this cover works quickly. So you've got to lift the dot here you simply pop that up and then you take your 43 E-tool and you simply slide that in there like so and then you pull you lift the dot over and now you've got your E-tool in its cover ready to go. But for when you're attaching it to the haversack you want the E-tool out of it so I'll be removing that before we mount it. Right guys let's mount the E-tool cover. So basically it's dead simple you just get your wire about here you see at the top and that goes into these two holes on the front in there. So if I hopefully don't get in the way of the camera and hopefully you can get a half decent shot of what I'm doing you simply fit that through there like so and then you twist it and get the other one in as well. It can be a little bit awkward and there you go that cover is now securely fitted to the haversack. Right so the next part that you will get fit to your haversack is the meat can pouch. So basically this is just a little bag that holds your canteen and your utensils. You see it's dead simple there's not a lot to it. You've got one little strap here with a buckle that you use to open and close it. On the back of it you've just got these four not quite D-rings but these four little mounting bits here they are used to hold it to the haversack. The strap for holding it on is fitted to the haversack itself and we'll show you that in a minute. And if I spin it around and open it up you see you've got space here for your mess kit and at the back here you've got these three little cutouts they're for your eating utensils so you have got room in there for a spoon fork and a knife. Right guys so now to fit the meat can pouch as you can see again you've got the four holes here. If you're wondering why I've put this on first that's because the tool cover can be a bit of a pain to get on if the meat can pouch is already fitted. So what you want to do is get your meat can pouch and put it basically where it's going to be. Now I find you flip this over and you've got these two straps one on each side so what you basically want to do is get their metal loops you pull them through the slot like that and you get your strap and this is a bit fiddly because they're very tight or at least this one is and you feed that through the loop like so so that's the first bit fitted and you get your next loop and you feed that through so then that side's done and you can just simply go over to the other side pull the loop through again get the strap pull that through get the next one through the loop get your strap pull that through so that's how you fit the meat can pouch. Now that may look a bit rubbish but that's only because it is a bit rubbish that's a really strange way of design that I've never fully understood it because if you apply lots of force to the meat can pouch you can pull these straight out obviously but it does do the job so you see there the pouch is fitted you can you know it's not just going to fall out there is tension to it and also I'd have to fight gravity to become undone. So now with the pouch fitted you can see that you've got the entrenchment tool underneath it and that's the main part of the haversack almost finished. Right guys so the next thing I'm going to attach is the M7 scabbard as seen here you can also use the M3 scabbard and where this goes on is basically the same as the e-tool so on the side here at the top you've got the two mounting fittings and then at the bottom here you've got this little strap that's kind of been put through on a loop so you again use the wire hanger to fit that on here so again that's exactly the same as the e-tool so you simply pop it through the eyelet like so and then you crease it up can be a little bit awkward especially with these old original things and you get the next side through like that and then obviously that's flapping around so what you do is that bit will fold in to the side now whilst it's set up like this that obviously looks stupid because there's nothing in the haversack so that's just making everything awkward so for the time being we'll leave the scabbard loose like that and now we're going to go over filling up the haversack. Right then guys this is the bit where it starts to get a bit strange so when the haversack's being filled up obviously there'd have been a lot of variation from soldier to soldier they would have done things how they preferred what I'm going to be putting in here today is a very basic set of equipment that you can customise and feel free to do whatever you want so basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a pup tent half this could be replaced with a blanket or clothing shirt stuff like that but the main thing you're trying to do here is make yourself a solid but padded base on your haversack so if you remember again I said about them d-rings what they've done is they've given this flap an almost natural bottom section you can see there where it pulls on the d-ring so I'm going to get my tent half which has been folded up and I'm going to place that right in the centre of the haversack like so so that that's pretty much at the base where this flap wants to pull on them d-rings so that's given me a little padded section to go against my back so that anything that the soldier alludes into it isn't going to be just sticking in their back and be uncomfortable. Right guys so now I'm going to take the other parts of the pup tent so you'll have your pool and you want to tuck that basically into the side like so so you've made yourself a nice section then I'm going to add in a couple of sets of rations and what I like to do I see a lot of people stack them either like this or they put them down like that what I like to do is to have two of them one there and one there again not saying this is the exact way that they were done in the manual but this is sort of a representation of what they would have done in the actual field so you've got some rations you've got your pup half and your peg and your pool sorry then I'm going to get my pegs I've got in a nice little peg bag now these pegs would often not be in the bag you can wrap them up inside your pup tent half but I've got them in the little bag and I'm going to pop them there and then I simply have my canvas water basin which again is not something that you necessarily always have probably much more likely not to have it than have it but bear with me guys this is a representation and I'm going to put that like that now the reason I've done it with these items like this is because I've got a couple of rations I've got the pup tent half and everything for the buddy system and they're really just representing anything you could put in so you could replace these with some socks with some extra shirt extra clothing of various different types you could replace the pup tent with some extra clothing you could replace these with more rations personal items anything you really feel is appropriate to go in there because again there's not a hard written list of things that are meant to be in here at all times and the soldiers really did set up what they felt was appropriate anyway right guys to do it up you'll start up by putting your top flap over the middle like so then you're going to get this side and you're going to pull that over so you're starting to get an idea of where everything's going to be centered and notice these straps will probably line up with one of the rings and if they don't quite line up it doesn't matter you just pull them down to where you need them and you've always got a bit of play in that flap itself so what I'm going to do is initially not fit on the bottom strap here and you'll see why in a little while so what I'm instead going to do is get the middle one pull it over like this and you're going to put the strap through there like that get it in your buckle and then before you do it tight put it through the other bit otherwise you'll loosen it when you're trying to secure it then I'm going to pull that mega tight like so and then pull that through there make sure it doesn't go loose and then the other end of the strap here you can feed through a loop and you can leave that hanging or you can tuck it in there like so but you want that to be nice and tight and then I'm going to do exactly the same with the top one pull it nice and tight get it through there just give it an extra tighten and once again pop that through there notice that hasn't got a loop to go through because the flap hasn't come up high enough and depending on how much you fill this up depends on how high or low that flap will so now we're going to do the bottom strap and I'm going to show you why I haven't tightened it up yet so you've got your main bottom strap and then you've got this strap here this is what holds the top of the haversack down so you can see you've got a little buckle there so you want to pull that get your strap and that goes through just like the rest of them you can pull that nice and tight so that now the bag is essentially done up you're just left with this one strap here the reason I haven't done that is because you can use that to stop your e-tool moving about right so we're going to open up the e-tool cover and then the little popper there get the e-tool and slide it in as I'll show you later and I'll just come around this side for a minute so that'll just slide through there push it in all the way old thing's got a bit tight there you go and then if you can get under your meat can pouch like this and do your popper up you've now got your e-tool in its case so that's fitted to the haversack but you know if that's gonna flap around like mad then you can get this strap you can feed it through the loop you want it to be through just like the rest of the straps and then you can bring it round the e-tool like this I'm hoping you can see this well enough and then although it is no mega tight you can then just get through this buckle here make it as tight as you can and now you can see that handle isn't wobbling around at all apologies for making the camera wobble so now you've got the pouch for the meat can fitted the e-tool and it's covered fitted and the bayonet fitted and now that the haversack's full up you can get your bayonet and slide that in the side there like so right guys now you've got your e-tool fitted there's just a couple more bits to add first one that you might as well get out of the way is your bayonet so that just slips in your scabbard as usual and that's one bit quickly out of the way now this is a bit janky how that's fitted on the side of the haversack you might find that gets in the way that's awkward to get to that's generally not a very good design and a lot of photos you'll see these are removed from the haversack and they'll be fitted on the and that's what i do in my impression but for the sake of this video we're going to be going for we're going to fit it to the haversack how it's meant to be done in the manual okay guys so let's get on to the uh meat can pouch then so if i move this over here a little bit and hopefully angle it up so you can see inside so again as i said earlier you've got your three gaps there for your utensils so i've got just a set of reproduction utensils here the spoon pops in like so then you've got your fork and your knife can go in the middle then you simply take the mess kit and pop that in the pouch now this is an original haversack i think that's shrunk quite a bit over the years and stuff and with the e-tool in that's very hard to get the mess kit in so all i have to do is kind of put it in lengthwise and then spin it and that's how mine sits like that now they should just go in nice and sideways but i'm gonna assume this is because it's an age thing but then once you've got that all inside there you simply pull the cover down and do this buckle up like all the other buckles and again mine is extremely short and i don't know if that's too shrunk or anything like that but there you have it guys so you now have a complete setup haversack so you've got so you've got your mess tin with utensils you've got your e-tool and its cover you've got your m1 bayonet on its scabbard which will do nothing but annoy you i guarantee because that's just a terrible terrible system and then you've got the haversack itself with a half a pup tent with the pulls the peg your rope is inside the pup tent roll up itself and you've got some rations in there and just some whatever odds and ends you want put in it really they varied quite a lot so now the how you technically should have it is out the way i'm going to show you how i tend to have it when i'm using it in displays and at reenactment events all right guys so the first thing i've done is i've took this off the haversack it is not a good design to have it there it's hard to get to it and my impression of the second arm division is based on photos of using where they actually have these fitted to their belts and not have a sack so the first thing i do is get rid of this the second thing i do is i remove the e-tool from it and again this is based on a real photo i'll get a picture of the photo and load it up here for you let me just dismount this and show you what i do instead right guys so as you can see i've removed the e-tool that means you can tighten this bottom strap up a lot better you could do that anyway if you were willing to use have the e-tool loose and flapping around that's what tightened the bottom up and made it so stuff's a lot less likely to fall out ahead so you've got a nice tight base to it that's also made the meat can pouch a lot easier to use because that's not so tight against the e-tool and basically what you do is and i'll load another photo up here of what i based this on is you simply get your cover and if i go around the other side you can just slide that under there like that to about that height you don't really find that has any effect this doesn't flap around too much so what we've got here is based on a real photo that i found i say found that was on the internet so someone else found it of a soldier that had this just packed in the back like that and that is obviously because they can get to it on their own but like this you can swing your hand over your back and you can just pull this out and in the photo they even have it undone you can see it just like that in their picture so that's how i tend to run my haversack and it does make a lot of sense another thing you can do guys which i've seen photos of is sometimes you see the meat can pouch that looks very squared off now obviously this has got a nice round misting in it but sometimes that looks very squared off and the general consensus is because that's been packed full of the ration boxes so if you see a photo of this and that looks completely squared off that's probably because that's rammed full of ration boxes so that's just another little idea that you might want to have for your impression so there you have it guys the m1928 haversack and the different components of it now i know i'm not exactly a professional at this but i hope that you've been able to see at least how to assemble this how the different parts go on and roughly what i have an idea for what you can put in it for your impressions remember that everything inside it can be basically customized how you wanted there are different ways to do it weirdly enough the manual i got seen here only covers what should be inside this when that's using the packtail so the next little series that i do where this is being done as a whole marching haversack with everything inside it will be done exactly as it should be done the manual when they started disassembling and messing about for in the field use there seems to have been a lot more variation to it i've seen many photos of many different setups these haversacks so i'm not going to definitely say this is exactly what you should do this is how i do it and at least you've been shown how all the different pieces fit together so hopefully i helped some of you and i'll see you next time