CIF: Consolidated Issue Facility. A big warehouse looking thing where normal men are lined up and treated like children by low ranking, low self esteem, clerks who never saw the backside of any conflict.
No fun event where a departing soldier like Nate here gets to turn in all his various field gear. Of course it will need to be laundered and sterilized in an autoclave. folded precisely as those clerks will measure with a micrometer. And if examination under X-Ray and the micron level microscope reveals as much as a single dead germ carcass, the whole mess will be rejected and said low ranking clerk will tell Nate to go clean it all again.
I have often wondered how CIF clerks survive 6 months into any assignment like that!
TA-50: is the name for all that Tactical field gear like rucks, field pants and coats, and canteens and stuff like that.
