COVER
One of the most invaluable, multi-use pieces of equipment in any good soldier’s arsenal, and one which no good soldier would be caught without in the field, is the military style poncho. It’s light, packable, and has a myriad of potential uses. Foremost among its uses is the ability to pitch it as a tarp for use as a shelter. Actual tarps, rain flies and survival blankets (the good kind, not the paper-thin Mylar kind) work equally well.
The simplest type of poncho shelter is a “Ranger roll”: no more than a poncho liner (woobie) combined with a poncho and snapped together in a tube to form a makeshift bivy. A poncho “hooch” can be pitched in minutes, and taken down in less than a minute, by tying off the hood of the poncho, using a guy line to secure it to an overhanging branch or tree (taking care that it’s not a dead branch ready to fall) and staking out the corner gromets directly to the ground...
