[quote=Gunther]
Thanks Foster. I'll have to take some time to read up on the 32nd ID in New Guinea. Most of what I know about the South Pacific is either USMC or USN. I see that corps operation involved the 6th and 7th Australian Divisions as well.
[/quote]
[hider=Long story short, we took a metaphor too far.]From what I gather/remember, he was part of the 127th regiment, during their time there, two of their ranks received the medal of honor (both posthumously, a 20 year old Sergeant and a 34 year old First Sergeant [had been discharged in '41 for being "too old", the attack on 'Pearl quickly reversed this decision]). Meanwhile, nearly a third of their ranks had just been inducted into boot-camp less than 5 months before seeing combat.
-[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32nd_Infantry_Division_(United_States)#Refitting_and_retraining]By April of '43, everybody had been wounded in some way or another[/url], by the start of 1944, it was back in New Guinea to finish the fight (Operations Persecution and Reckless, the first landing as part of "Hit them where they aren't").

In any case, his unit was among the very first US-Army Divisions to engage in a major air-landing procedure further than any previous by any other military (hence why they were loaded aboard C-46/DC-2 with its much larger fuel-load; their artillery was flown-in slung beneath B-17s) but due to faltering logistics and rushed timing (as a last-second replacement of the 9th AIF), much of their equipment had to be left-behind (including an entire engineer-battalion that was already sailing for Europe, later to be re-designated in 1943 to prevent confusion). [i]Their troopships were escorted by the USS Indianapolis[/I], which would become infamous for events later in the war.

-The story of the 32nd could be used pretty easily as a means to foreshadow how the war ended, and the political issues going-on with the general-staff. As the Kokoda and Guadalcanal campaigns operated concurrent to each other, it was the desire to retake Henderson-Field that required the forces on Kokoda to withdraw and redeploy. Due to lack of organic artillery, the 32nd became increasingly reliant on USMC dive-bombers flying from Henderson-Field.[/hider]
If you can decide how bad the fighting in an area was by how many medals of honor resulted from it... New Guinea was pretty bad.
-I think we handed out 12 of them. Doesn't sound like much until you remember that the US forces sent there didn't get into many history-books.

Which is one of the downsides of having multiple smaller engagements happening in and around and/or supporting a larger one, especially in a protracted war, such small actions seldom get noticed unless you happen to have a reporter from Rolling-Stones following your unit (in which case only the eccentric are noticed).
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As for any further changes to equipment, Grathnik could issue body-armor and just tell people to deal with it. As personal tastes in attire may be a way for nationalism to creep-into the RP.
-That and my knowledge of combat-attire gets pretty horrible after they replaced Doron/fiberglass plates with Kevlar.