You don’t see this one every day, and it sure brings back memories for me. When I was assigned to the 25th Division, we were on an exercise at an auxiliary airstrip in Hawaii. Our sleeping area was in an old WWII revetment. It started raining hard one night, filling the revetment with water, and I woke up just in time to find my air mattress floating away with me on it! Great subject from Bravo 6. VR, Russ

You guys had AIR beds? Jeez - I knew I'd joined the wrong Army. (Great figures though). Brian

It wasn't an "air bed" by a long shot. Rather it was what we refer to on this side pond as a camping "air mattress". It was only about 5.6ft long, and about 24" wide at the widest (it was tapered). Fully inflated, it gave you about 2" of space between you and mother earth, unless you moved, which usually caused anything underneath you to be felt, especially sharp rocks. I'm 6'3", so quite a bit of me hung over the ends. It also had a nasty habit of slowly deflating during dark, cold nights, depositing you unceremoniously on the cold hard ground, leaving you lying on a rubber sheet with constantly changing air pockets to keep you awake. I could never really get comfortable on it, but when you're tired enough, you can sleep anywhere. I was really tired the night it was raining in Hawaii, having been awake for 48 hours previously, and I woke up floating in about 6" of water. It was a warm tropical rainfall, and frankly I didn't notice until the shouting around me started--but I'd already floated about 4ft from where my sleeping spot was! The air mattress was made of a rubberized canvas material, and had to be frequently patched (it "sometimes" came equipped with a small patch kit, which never really worked well). It was finally replaced by a dense OD green foam pad in about 1990. Although harder, this was better, as it never lost air,and what you started out with at night is what you woke up with in the morning. I think the air mattress came into being sometime in the mid 1950's. It was never really suited to combat conditions, but could be found in bivouacs in training areas quite often. When we went to the field where tents and cots were used, i.e., annual tank gunnery, that's where you'd find them. Used in conjunction with a cot, they could be quite comfortable, otherwise, they merely kept the sharper rocks from digging into you. By the way, I never heard anyone call it a "rubber lady", but there were other names we called it which can't be mentioned here. VR, Russ

That ain't no lady...

I remember using them for sledding at Black Rapids in Alaska when my platoon spent a week there TDY to learn to ski on the old 'white rockets with suicide bindings' (if you've skied on military skis back in the day, you know what I mean). First evening there we were bored so we broke out the air mattresses and hit the slopes...with predictable results - they slid great. Too great. They were uncontrollable, one of the grunts crashed into the guy wire of a telephone pole and broke his collar bone. He tried to tell me "Oh, it's okay, Doc. We can hide it, right?" Mind you his shoulder was now shaped like a ^ vs. a straight line. My take was along the lines of "Sorry, dude you need somebody higher up the foodchain than me to fix that one." Fortunately, I missed the fallout from the air mattress sledding but they were all confiscated from us until the end of training. File that under bored grunt tricks.

What, no two Motrin and send him on his way?

It reminds me summer camp ! LOL

This is excellent initiative and creativity by Bravo-6. Kudos to Bravo-6 for continually expanding their product line with relaxed pose figures. Other figure producers should take serious note. MecModels also has a figure on the air bed/mattress. https://www.mecmodels.com/?product=fi-sl01-american-soldier-on-airbed Keep up the excellent work Bravo-6!

Trust me, the Vitamin M came later. Once the shock of the initial injury wore off he was pretty glad we didn't just try to hide it; they were generous with the pain control at Ft. Greeley when they set it. He was a happy camper until the demerol wore off..., and he still had to stand out on the slopes to watch the classes to boot.