a devoted soldier

Fasteners of this sort can come in very handy when you want to customize your field belt to fit your body. Doing so has both a pesonal and an operational advantage. On the other hand, it takes quite a bit of time, and though soldiers on reserve duty have lots of time, they seem to refuse to devote it to tasks of this sort. These fasteners are quite inexpensive. If you use them, you can always get more. It seems, however, that I didn't use them - I probably saved them for when I thought I'd really need them.