A couple of weeks ago we looked at the 88 pattern belt. This was a fairly standard, 2 inch wide belt and was made of a heavy duty woven nylon webbing. This belt is not particularly ergonomic so was issued with a belt comforter from the webbings inception. This comforter consists of a large pad of foam, covered in Auscam fabric:
The belt comforter prevents the belt from rubbing on the wearer’s hip bones and helps protect the user from ouches and equipment with sharp corners of hard protrusions that would cause discomfort over a long march. Loops are provided along the length of the comforter:
These allow the belt to be threaded through:
As mentioned in the post on the belt, these loops are a very close fit to the belt and the male half of the Fastex buckle needs to be removed from the belt in order to thread it through. As before this component was made by Wise Pearl Ltd in 2010:
Whilst this comforter worked well, in service it was found to offer insufficient padding when carrying heavy loads, so it was not uncommon for two of them to be used one above the other to widen the area protected:
