When I was stationed in Germany, most of the guys in the barracks tried to add some decoration to their rooms to personalize them and add a little color to the drab environment. One guy in my room had a camouflage poncho liner on his bed, and the rest of us had fleece blankets. We still had to make our beds with the issue wool blankets, but after we had the beds made we could spread out our blankets and have something besides O.D. Green to look at. I got a blanket with a tiger on it, which is on my bed right now. Not because I like tigers, but because no one else had a blanket like it.
And most of us had colorful tapestries hanging on the wall with thumb tacks. They're just glorified rugs with pictures on them, but much better than being surrounded on all sides by gray or blue-green or whatever color the walls were. I got one with ships on it, just because it was different. It's in my hallway upstairs. The hallway is too narrow for me to get back far enough to take a picture, so I had to take it from inside the bathroom. That's why it's on an angle, but I got most of it in the pic. I think the ceilings were 15-20' high. I'm not sure, but the walls were really tall, and every room had the same color on all 4 walls. It was depressing in a very institutional kind of way. Like a grayish color prison or mental hospital or something.
I recently bought a poncho liner for the first time in my life. It was a Tropical Death pattern poncho liner on sale at Grunt Style. The fourth pic is a detail of the camo pattern. I put it on my bed on top of my other blanket, but it's made of Nylon and slides right off. The insulation is all polyester, and you can use the ties around the edges to fasten it into a G.I. rain poncho. Then you fold it in half and use it as a lightweight sleeping bag. A lot of guys had these in Vietnam because they were warm enough and when they were wet would dry out a lot faster than a regular sleeping bag. During the GWOT people were calling poncho liners woobies. If you ask them why, they might tell you, "You woobie cold without it." But the name apparently came from the 1983 Michael Keaton movie Mr. Mom. A kid in the movie had a security blanket he called his woobie. Soldiers and marines say this is the best piece of gear the U.S. military ever issued, but I wouldn't know since I was never issued one and haven't put mine to the test yet.
My roommate who had a poncho liner on his bed instead of a fleece blanket had a big painted plywood target hanging on the wall. I think it was a BMP-2, a Soviet amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicle. It was some kind of Soviet armored vehicle, and looked like it should have been on a TOW missile firing range. I don't know where he got it, but t was hanging about 8' off the ground in his corner of the room. It was still there when he left, but I don't know what happened to it after that. I ended up having to move into a different room on the first floor of the building. I think have some pictures upstairs of another tapestry or 2 that some of my friends and coworkers had. If i find them I'll scan them so you can see the variety.
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