Interesting idea.Not for infantry but I wonder about the plausbility of on certain types of warships having collapsible/detachable lightly armored splinter shields that could be raised up and locked in place or taken out of storage carried to the ships side or such and then locked in place. Basically the idea would be to provide some protection against things like aircraft strafing, light shrapnel, and that sort of thing for certain types of warships. Basically don't need to have them up in in place all the time but capable of being rapidly em placed to provide protection against shell splinters to crewman.
Also, for a minute there, I thought you were going to say that there should be a rack of armored shields in landing craft to give the disembarking infantry moving cover to hide behind in landing operations, e.g., D-Day.