Field/Combat Army Rations. What Are Your Stories of Eating Chow? CHOW SHARE OF THE DAY?

SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC I am a 92G and if I don't get the change to cook for my troops I feel lost. My last AT with my old unit before I did my IST, we went the whole AT without cooking at all and I felt useless to say the least. I feel though soldiers hate us cooks, but when we don't have any food, then they want us too cook for them...lol. Its like we can never win at all. But i love my job and if I don't get to cook for them, yes I feel lost and almost a waste of time.

I can't even begin to tell you how many C ration cans of ham and eggs or beans and franks I cooked on a 60 kilowatt generator manifold. Lol

I used to mix the instant coffee and hot chocolate together and heat it in my canteen cup. ♡

I'm coming at this from a different perspective because I was an Air Force officer and pilot. Consequently, I have to say I didn't have the pleasure of "going to the field" the way Soldiers and Marines do it. As transport aircrew we often flew long missions. Our in-flight meals were the same as those offered to our passengers. They came from the an in-flight kitchen anytime we departed from a US air base in CONUS or OCONUS. Basically a box lunch. Nothing to rave about, but good food. My favorites were fried chicken or roast beef sandwich.

OCONUS we were sometimes at more remote locations or places without a traditional US air base. One of my favorite was NAS Souda Bay Crete. We flew missions between Crete and Germany supporting the Army. If you were lucky, you arranged the mission so you stayed overnight in Crete. When we departed the NAS each morning, the Navy galley provided a large pan of sweet rolls along with our box lunches. Nice.

Instead of MREs, which hadn't been invented yet, or C-rats, we carried a case of "in flights". These were rations designed for aircrews. Not sure why we had special rations. When we did break into the case, we found the food wasn't all that bad. Crackers, roast pork (in a can), fruit and cereal bar, canned fruit. Not great, but not terrible if your are babysitting a broke C-130 at a remote airfield in Turkey. We also had cases of canned water on the aircraft.

Late in my career, I served on a unified command staff and participated in an exercise in Somalia. This was my first encounter with MREs. Hot dogs, beans, chili mac, coffee, crackers, cereal-fruit bars, not bad stuff.

McAlester Army Ammunition Plant operation "can't remember." We were living in GP mediums and they had a few set up for chow tents as well.

Hot breakfast; I had been in the reserves for a few years and hadn't taken it upon myself to try grits. To me they just seemed like they would taste like farina (malt-o-meal). It was zer0-dark-thirty and I was hungry. 7 or 8 hours until lunch so I figured I would load up.

I remember people eating grits with butter and sugar in basic, so I figured I would give it a try. I grabbed the sugar dispenser (glass jar w/a chrome lid-pour spout). I generously toped my grits with sugar. I take a large spoonful and come to find out it was parmesan cheese. It was dark and there were no lights. I was confused and in awe of this strange hearty not sweet taste in my mouth. After a few seconds I determined what the situation was and chowed down.

At the end of my meal I picked up my 8oz cardboard carton of milk, you know the ones that drink down easy like shot on a weekend pass. I started slamming it and to my surprise it hadn't been stored proper, it was sour. I started yelling through the chow tent to check the milk before you drink it. I just about lost my breakfast after drinking that.

So there I was in the middle of southern Iraq during the invasion. And for the umpteenth week we were having MREs for all three meals, and rationed water to wash it down. An Iraqi man stumbled upon us and through our commo cards, his broken English, and lots of arm flailing we communicated we would pay him to bring us food. We asked him for a live chicken(only way to make sure it wasn't poisoned, we didn't know this dude) and some veggies. He came through, we slaughtered the chicken right there at our OP and made a stew using the spices from the MRE, the crushed red pepper tasted delicious. My squad and I ate great that evening, we didn't get real food for another six months.

i always enjoyed eating last, especially waiting for cold spagetthi with sand in it.

Iraq, 2003, all we had were T rats.. tamales.. every day for over a month

... tasted like paper ... until you mix it with the sauce...

I always love reading other peoples responses... As for me, I always bought an extra case of cheese and peanut butter from the cooks. Scrapped all the crap, kept the tabasco, tp, creamer, and the pound cake. Main meals were ones that tasted good being cooked on the hood of the truck while on mission. (Ham slice, spaghetti, ya that was about it...) At about a 1000 calories a piece for the pound cakes they were almost a meal upon themselves! That, and a pack of smokes!

Have many stories - good and bad-- and my favorite doesnt involve me eating- while in desert storm/ shield - they'd drop off MRE's- each got a case-- well seems it seems the guys found out our PA liked chicken ala king- they would slide the bands off the case - swap out some meals- most times he got 8 CAK's a nd 4 other meals -- he didnt catch on till couple weeks before we came back- we had other chow so the MRE swap wasnt important to the guys -- he opened a case and said dang -- theres only 1 chicken ala king here - we all busted a gut