...green eggs and ham?
This pic embiggenates.
Complete with interdental stimulator and post-combat relaxers, which the public no longer supplies to their troops in rations, thanks to the schoolmarmish-nature of American Governance.
Complete with interdental stimulator and post-combat relaxers, which the public no longer supplies to their troops in rations, thanks to the schoolmarmish-nature of American Governance.
My fav was Beef and Rocks errmm... I mean, Potato Slices.
Chocolate Nut Roll was like eating a cupcake shaped blob of compressed talcum powder, but if you steamed it and covered it with field made chocolate frosting, it wasn't half bad.
Ham and farts? Wasn't a fan.
Well, in C's.
Pound and choc was, indeed, a goodie. My fav, though, was Peaches in Cream.
That whole thing on taking out tobacco...
I never understood that. Take tobacco out of rations meant to be eaten while in combat because tobacco is bad for you?
Anyhoo... I remember when MREs first came out. Wasn't a fan. Yeah. Lighten up the load by taking water out of the food which meant carrying more water so you could wet your food. Besides, the canned fruit of the Cs were just the thing required when plagued with the sort of thirst that water just can't break.
They were so old they burned like a fuse.
In '64 some of ours were dated late '40s.
It always struck me as a bit hypocritical to yank the cigs out of the ration packs, but leave the matches in...
And spell check still doesn't work.
C=Combat.
The beef slices with potatoes and gravy had to be opened from the bottom so you could eat the meat and gravy then throw the potatoes away, they were inedible. We once had a new LT at Graf put a can of Ham Slices on the stove in the tent (without opening it) then fall asleep. I remember a bang in the night but thought it was just some nearby artillery. We got up the next morning and there were pieces of ham and a shredded can laying about. He tried to kill us all with a ham grenade. We considered making him sleep outside with the boar hogs after that. I do remember some of the C-rats with cigs during Basic Training in 1974 but then they got phased out.
Where do the cheese go?
Well one dark night a 1st Lt walked up to one of the fires as the Marines were backing away.
Blammo. Mystery solved. He had cheese in his hair and moustache and eyelashes.
From henceforth and forever he was known as Lt AuGratin.
I was under the impression that the code for rations was: A=fresh food, prepared from scratch; B=packaged and canned food, prepared by a mess crew; C=C-rations, combat and field use. T-rations came later, K-rations came before. I just served a T-ration cake to my brothers on a camping trip, I think it was from 1995. The last K's I saw had weevils in them, but that was in the 60's, and they had been issued to the Forest Service in the late 40's.
I lurved both Ham and Eggs as well as Ham and Lima beans. Those seemed to be gone by the time I got into the TNARNG. We soon got MREs, which were OK. The Chicken, Ham and Turkey loaf were Ok, if a bit dry. The packed fruit was OK too, about as OK as it was in Cs. I liked the Coconut candy in Cs better than what we got in the early MREs.
The Cs we were getting in the late 60s had been packed about the time I was born. Seemed a bit strange to be eating something in which the packaging was at least as old as I was. Still liked it, though.
that takes me back
I was with the 14th Armored Cav back in the 60's. ( I had a big ol' 577) we put our C's on the heat exhaust grill and in no time we had hot C's.
pound cake was my best favorite
I remember opening a can of fruit one time to find a big fly floating there.....
the smokes were ancient weren't they!!
still have my P38 from back then
thanks for the memory
Roy Patterson
B Troop 1st Squadron
14th Armored Cav
66-69
Put blackberry jam on the Boned Chicken or Turkey and it was Thanksgiving-in-a-can.
But I always wondered why even the people who canned it couldn't tell whether it was chicken or turkey...
They're the people who eventually came up with turducken.
The proper method of cooking Beef and Rocks was to put a couple of dents in the can with hard knuckle raps, puncture the top of the can in a couple places with the P38, use your KBar or bayonette to cut a itty bitty trench in the ground about a finger thickness wide, a couple inches deep and about twice the can width long. Drop a heat tab in the center of that trench, light it and put the can over it. Cook until the dents pop out.
And there you go. Pressure cooked Beef and the Rocks taste a whole lot like the tater slices they're supposed to be.
Something that always bothered me about C's.
Spaghetti and Beef Chunks. Beans and Meatballs. Who messed that up? I mean, seriously. Who made that decision?
Oh, and a Fun Fact. If you ate enough of the Chocolate with Toffee discs, it'd turn your piss green.
Oh, and vitamine C in the instant coffee? Heat kills vita C. All that gave us was bitter coffee.
And, last but not least... I started out as an 0351. An Assaultman. One of the things we'd spent a lot of time learning up was improvised explosive devices using... you guessed it... the cans from C Rats. When the change was made to MREs, our first whine was "what're we supposed to use for improvised granade casings now?" and, "You can't make improvised toe poppers from these MRE bags, idiots!"
beans and franks with essence of diesel.
Sliced peaches was my favorite.
I still have my p38 and dogtag on my keyring.
If you heated the cans in the turbine exhaust or around the engine they tasted like JP-4, so our prefered method was a small piece of C4.