Original Item. Only One Available. Issued by the Marine Corps, the Mitchell pattern Shelter Half was made from water-repellent cotton duck and was identical in design to the Army's olive green version. The reversible camouflage consisted of a green leaf 'summer' design with a brown cloud 'winter' pattern on the underside. Beginning in 1959, the Mitchell camouflage pattern was also used for the reversible M1 helmet cover.

This is a great set including a Korean War pack with an entrenchment tool & cover and a great Mitchell pattern camouflage shelter. The material itself appears to have no damage that we can see. The shelter has been used and does show signs of wear and does have fading present. The frog and leaf camouflage pattern is woodland (green) on one side and desert (sand) on the reverse and was generally only used by the US Marines.

The USMC reversible Mitchel camouflage shelter half features:
- Press studs around the outside.
- Eyelets along the bottom with rope cord looped in them for pegging down.
- Eyelets in the top corners for the tent pole to fit in.
- Fully reversible green camo on one side and sand camo on the other side.

The shovel is dated 1952 in a 1944 Dated carrier, but the carrier’s snap has torn off. The pack has the name JOE BAKER written on, so this could be a good research project.

The shelter half has a tag on the interior reading:

USMC
SHELTER HALF, TENT, CAMOUFLAGE 
WITH SNAP FASTENERS, EA.
STEIN BRO. MFG. CO.
DA-30-352-TAP-882
DATED 13 MARCH 1953

This is truly a wonderful and iconic piece of United States Marine Corps field equipment complete with the blanket rolled up inside and its original pack with an entrenching tool. It is tagged with an original data label and dated March 13th, 1953. Comes ready to display or used to keep your grunt rolls dry! Semper Fi Marines.

A shelter-half is a simple kind of partial tent designed to provide temporary shelter and concealment when combined with one or more sections. Two sheets of canvas or a similar material (the halves) are fastened together with snaps, straps or buttons to form a larger surface. The shelter-half is then erected using poles, ropes, pegs, and whatever tools are on hand, forming an inverted V structure. Small tents like these are often called pup tents in American English.

Shelter halves are a mainstay of most armies, and are known from the mid 19th century. Often, each soldier carries one shelter-half and half the poles, etc., and they pair off to erect a two-man tent. The size and shape of each half shelter piece may vary from army to army, but are typically rectangular, triangular or lozenge shaped. When time and space allow, some forms of half-shelters can be combined into a larger, more complex tent.

Shelter-halves are usually designed to serve double duty as ponchos against the rain, or for the concealment of snipers. While the fabric is often simple olive drab, several nations use camouflage fabric. The first printed camouflage for soldiers was the Italian Telo mimetico introduced in 1929 for their half-shelters. The first camouflage uniforms were the Second World War German paratrooper smock, based on their M1931 Splittermuster shelter-halves. Russian Army has used Plasch-palatkas (literally "cape-tents", designed to be used as both a part of a larger tent cover, or an individual weatherproof cape) since 1894, and the modern version, virtually unchanged since, was introduced in 1936, with the camo version being available since 1942. To add some confusion, the ordinary waterproofed cape with a similar name (plasch-nakidka, "cape-overcoat") was issued at the same time, but these weren't intended to combine with each other.