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Packs tend to be dropped at the start of engagements and it may not be possible to return to collect that pack if the character was forced to flee for their lives.

This is the important point several here get hung up on. Rucksacks haven't been lost; everyone has one. So what about the stuff normally carried in it? That's it. That's the disconnect. If I have my ruck, why don't I have the stuff that should be packed in it?

Packs tend to be dropped at the start of engagements and it may not be possible to return to collect that pack if the character was forced to flee for their lives.

This is the important point several here get hung up on. Rucksacks haven't been lost; everyone has one. So what about the stuff normally carried in it? That's it. That's the disconnect. If I have my ruck, why don't I have the stuff that should be packed in it?

As others have said, you may have lost things, things may have become broken because this war has turned the world into hell on earth, something that no one here, regardless of personal experience (and hopefully we never will), have experienced where the supply chain has been broken since '98. Players already start with more gear than the average soldiers have (because they are players). There might be soldiers that don't even have their backpack left. I mean two years in a nuclear war with no supply (and also with broken communications), they should probably be happy that they start with such good amount of ammo and stuff that they do.

Besides the narrative above there is also a game balance reason, a balance between the various archetypes/careers. But regardless that this reason is a game balancing reason, if anyone wants to have a group of very lucky soldiers that haven't experienced much of that hell war so they still have most of the gears, they once upon a time was given to them, intact, then all the civilians should be given the same treatment.

Rucksacks haven't been lost; everyone has one. So what about the stuff normally carried in it? That's it. That's the disconnect. If I have my ruck, why don't I have the stuff that should be packed in it?

You have a rucksack. Not necessarily the rucksack you started the war 12-36 months before with. And if it was actually this exact rucksack, then items went out, some went back in, but others didn't. You know how much stuff my company alone lost during a regular exercise? People came back with missing t-shirts, tents, magazines, cold weather gear damaged, liners or goretex jackets ripped etc. That was after 5-8 days and it took them weeks, if not months to get replacements, because my unit was so far down supply lines during peace time that no-one cared.

Now imagine such a unit doing two weeks of intense warfare against Soviet front line troops in 1997. Brigade and division CPs are wiped out, your supply requests never makes it to corps level stores, because the clerk and his papers are just gone. When the remnants of your unit are withdrawn from the frontline, new guys arrive as replacements. Your TO&E gets modified, because supplies cannot deliver tier one equipment, so you get second rate stuff from warehouses last stocked in the 1970s. Instead of PASGT you now have Vietnam era stuff. During the renewed campaign in 1998, the balloon goes up. You second tier gear gets blown up, too. This time, hardly any new supplies come in, as NATO naval forces barely made it over the Atlantic. What few fresh forces made it through are filled up with veterans from units dissolved. They now carry Vietnam era gear and look mostly homogeneous.

Your unit isn't that lucky. While you weren't hit that hard, when the nukes came that doesn't mean, you didn't loose stuff. It just meant, your unit is declared combat ineffective and will be relegated to rear duties, including cantonment security. You effectively became wehrbauern, a unit of armed peasants that is able to defend both itself and its cantonment era against local raiders and the few incursions the enemy can still mount. Replacement personnel consists of convalescent and those not maimed enough to be completely useless. Your clerks look like puppets from a spookhouse, missing eyes, arms and legs a dime a dozen, not to mention severe burns from past campaigns.

Your MTO&E looks like shit, though. By now, whenever you're given "new" equipment, it was could be pulled from the stores so far down the line, it looks more like Korea than Vietnam. The best replacements come from a deal your government made with governments from Spain and Portugal as well as a shady general from Croatia. This is how your light infantry division came to restock its attached tank regiment (yes, it's a thing again). You now have a company of M47s (the M48A5 went straight to a frontline division), which break down frequently, but are easy to repair. The new stars of your tank support are the Croatian vintage M36s. Though they are World War Two vintage equipment, their ammunition is compatible with the M47. Additionally, Croatia modernized their "power packs" (aka "the motor") with T-55 engines. That makes it comfortably easy to find spare parts across the Polish frontlines. It also nearly meant these tank destroyers would have gone to a dedicated tank battalion. So your division needs to use them, or they will be reassigned. So, you're not only tasked with rearguard security and farming for your corps, but you also have to do counterinsurgency duty. This certainly helps getting some stuff, but it's not good for a uniform TO&E.

Then, in 2000, NATO makes its final assault. Operation Reset is finally materializing. Your division gets some new stuff, hoarded for months and collected from all units not slated for the initial push. Or at least that's what was supposed to happen. You had to hand over some of the gear from the "M" in MTO&E first, though. Some of the new stuff never made it to your battalion, but at least you get to use a M16 again (no M16A1, A2 or A3 were available, though) and ride in a M113, next to a M60 tank. Of course, after 2 years and now fuel to spare for training as well as hardly any supply parts, these puppies are basically falling apart left and right and your drivers barely now how to handle them. But hey, the other side has the same problems and you're in a surprise offensive, right? Well, yes, except, the "surprise" part. The Soviets haven't been idle lately, too, and your initial assault gets hammered into a stop, before Lodz is in sight. Additionally, the Soviets were able to muster about as much equipment as you, except they didn't waste it in an assault, but will now use it in a counteroffensive.

So, you ran back to Kalisz. No, not "withdrew": "ran". As in "the division next to you withdrew faster than you could cover your flanks". So now you're trying to do the same to them. You never thought this is how it would end, but your German Bundeswehr liason officer, an elderly lieutenant colonel pulled from retirement in 1998, tells you that was how his father remembered their run in 1944, when Army Group Center got crushed by Operation Bagration. His father used to tell, how he had to drag a soldier out of his motorbike sidecar, so there was room for the division general to escape. The soldier wasn't pretty fond of the action and almost shot your liaison officer's father, until a Soviet artillery shell took out the motorbike and with it the general in the sidecar. From then on the soldier was thankful to his colonel. All the way to their POW camp in the Soviet Far East, he took care of the colonel, mostly walking. You're not interested into walking all the way to Siberia, though. Besides, the Soviets abandoned POW camps in 1998. They now use POWs as slave laborers. Also, your division general just got ran over by a BMP.

So you put the peddle to the metal and...

...you're on your own.

What's in the rucksack?

I don't mean to tread on anyone's toes if there's an argument but... Awesome post Ursus Major! This really shows what the brown stuff hitting the fan looks like just before the campaign starts.

I got emotional by that post Ursus Maior

I don't mean to tread on anyone's toes if there's an argument but... Awesome post Ursus Major! This really shows what the brown stuff hitting the fan looks like just before the campaign starts.

Thanks, guys

@Fenhorn
I'm sorry... I guess?

I don't mean to tread on anyone's toes if there's an argument but... Awesome post Ursus Major! This really shows what the brown stuff hitting the fan looks like just before the campaign starts.

Thanks, guys

@Fenhorn
I'm sorry... I guess?

No, thank you (for the nice and colourful picture you painted with that story that also was very informative).

Yes, very vivid and makes the point quite well.

I think it could also be helpful to think of this war as "Bastogne everywhere" - and the eventual relief does not exist.

*snip*

Thank you for putting into words what I have obviously failed to convey to people here.

This really is an unprecedented situation and people are treating it like their characters just came back from a training exercise and their CO will be on their case if they've lost their spare undies.

No, thank you (for the nice and colourful picture you painted with that story that also was very informative).

No worries, I was just messing with you.