I have stumbled upon a fair few Aussie DPCU soft link bags for the Minimi in multiple places that I have worked over the years. Different armouries and ammo storage areas at different bases. Always dusty and discarded under a bench or in a stack of random, untracked kit in a dingy corner.
Yesterday when my Facebook feed served up some photos that a gentleman had publicly posted from his time with the British Army in Iraq back in 2004, I spotted another DPCU belt bag, so I went looking and quickly found a couple more photos of them (as I suspected I probably would). Even one featuring a French soldier.
While I’ve not seen any official documentation about acquisition of these belt bags for the L110, it seems like a pretty solid guess that they were purchased in quantity some time around the initial purchase of the FN LMGs in 2003. Perhaps the Australian forces had a few extra to sell? Or whichever company was making them for the ADF had the manufacturing capacity available.
Since the LMG was adopted right at the time of the invasion, I’d wager there was a scramble for accompanying ancillary kit, because it’s quite rare to see anything issued in the MoD that’s in a camo pattern other than DPM/DDPM/MTP.
While the US of course has 100 and 200rnd soft belt bags in Woodland and the green or black plastic 200rnd ‘drums’ supplied in ammo tins, I have only commonly seen the smaller 100rnd soft bags issued by the UK in DPM. Often, British Minimis in photos are just seen with a loose belt hanging.
The DPCU bags actually show up quite often on surplus sites and at other similar retail outlets here in the UK. Unlike rifle mags they were probably never tracked on official inventories – or nobody cared/they were disposed of in bulk.
After I posted this content to IG and FB a young gentleman who had been in Afghan in the early 2000s shared a photo of himself with an early L108, also equipped with the DPCU soft belt bag. Interestingly fully kitted out in original DPM which wouldn’t have been the preference for where he was (Kabul province which is a lot higher and drier than Helmand). Don’t worry though he got DDPM two weeks before heading home.
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