Carry On Soldier: A historical and contemporary look at soldier load carriage injuries, conditioning, reconditioning and risk management

The requirement to carry loads has challenged military units and soldiers as far back in time as the Assyrian spearmen of antiquity (circa 800 B.C.), who experimented with their shield weights in order to reduce their combat load. The impacts of these carried loads on the soldier have reduced army size and impacted on warfare tactics. As such, it is not surprising that soldiers have gone to great efforts to reduce the load weight that they must carry - from
the Roman Legionnaires employing mules and slaves to carry their loads, to Confederation soldiers in the American Civil War throwing away equipment; an action mimicked by Australian soldiers in Vietnam. However, recent research suggests that, even acknowledging the impacts of load weight and dedicating resources to minimising these loads, load
weights carried by soldiers are increasing. For the Australian soldier during the Great War, the external carried loads were estimated to weigh between 27 and 33.5 kg. In the Second World War these loads ranged from 20 to 41 kg and in the Vietnam War, loads increased again from between 30 to 40 kg for rifleman, up to 56 kg for radio operators. In more recent conflicts in East Timor, Iraq, and Afghanistan, loads were reported to have averaged around 50 kg to 56.7 kg (the latter being mean marching order loads) for all soldiers, regardless of platoon role.
On this basis, load weights continue to present as a challenge for the Australian Army soldier and 3 millennia of history suggests that this will not change in the near future.