Zero Shorts - 5" Inseam

I’ve been wearing ZF shorts since shortly after I got medically retired from the Army in 2016. Being an old Light Infantryman, short shorts are part of my culture. When ZF dropped the 5-inch version, I bought one in every color and they quickly became my most worn clothing item.

Around March this year, I got caught out in one of the grass fires that tore across Oklahoma. The fire was pushing toward my neighbor’s house, fueled by a row of pine trees along her fence line. I grabbed a couple fire extinguishers and an e-tool, managed to put out two of the trees, and broke the chain long enough for the fire department to arrive and get everything under control.

Unfortunately, in the process, I got caught in the middle of the field while trying to exfil with my 4Runner. I had to bail out and ended up running through about 30–40 feet of fire, which left me with burns on roughly 22% of my body, mostly my legs and arms.

In true redneck fashion, I was wearing a pair of 5 inch M81 ZF shorts, work boots, and a t-shirt.

The fire was hot enough to light my actual legs on fire, which isn’t easy to do since human skin carries so much moisture, something I remembered from IED training years ago. Fortunately, stop, drop, and roll really does work. I wouldn’t let them cut my clothes off at the ER because I wanted to save them for a shadow box one day. Which worked out because you can see in the photos exactly what I was wearing while fighting the fire that day.

I spent three weeks in the…