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Depends on the mission.
In the early days of UNPROFOR in Yugoslavia, it was foot patrols, we had no body armour (wasn't even standard issue back then), weapon slung, magazine out, no round in the chamber, not even a helment. Load magazine and round only if you're near fire. You return fire only if it was aimed fire directed towards you. Those rules were UN rules.
Later on in the mission when it started getting harried, it was lock and load once you're outside the view of any UN REMF and all fire is considered aimed fire.
In IFOR/SFOR I, all patrols were armed recee. They didn't know we were coming. They didn't know when we left. All they knew was that of all a sudden, Canadian soldiers were all around them and just as fast, we're gone. Usually we arrive near the village in trucks and dismount, do our stuff and leave. The only thing was we were always damned pilote about everything. I know we scared the crap out of the locals but just as fast, a smile and some handshakes relieve the tensions extremely fast - unless we're there to do something nasty such as an arms cache raid.
In SFOR II, we pretty well settled back to the early days of UNPROFOR.
In KFOR, we started getting body armour and reverted back to the ways of IFOR/SFOR I.
In ISAF, we're doing the same thing but we took the body armour away from the guys in SFOR II (not enough to go around).
This is pretty well the same way the Brits do their patrols. The difference between us and the Americans is that they would do their dismount inside the village. We do it outside the village. A much more menancing site with all those Bradleys around.
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Chimo
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