Hi Skip,
I'm a pack Rat.
Recently there have been references to results of smoking when the smoking lamp was out during boot camp and how the buckets were put over your head, etc. Some of the letters to you seemed to not believe the stories were more than a sea story about the bucket. So I dug my bucket out and offer it as proof that we were issued them. Please note that on the bail of my bucket there is even a Tie Tie. In the past 60 odd years I have forgotten the use for the existing Tie Tie. I know it was functional or it would have been gone years ago.
I would pack one of the wool blankets in the bottom of my sea bag. Then packed other soft stuff around the bucket which was on top of the blanket. In the bucket was packed anything fragile with more clothing or whatever around those items. No round worn circles show on my sea bags bottom from it being dragged or dropped because of the bucket.
There were several Navy and Army veterans in Platoon 70 and they had offered many stories about what would happen when orders were not followed so the platoon didn't have many problems with abiding by the "DI's, Whims". We did have the sand carrying challenges and practice fire drills with them. We had only one trumped up discipline time for someone folding one of their blankets to soften the bucket while setting on it and spit shining shoes.
Semper Fi
Oltopper