Greetings and Salutations!
I think I’m finally caught up on my sleep. And I’ve got some stuff I’m researching right now regarding the Krain and a Russian Claim regarding our direct involvement, but like I said, I’m waiting on a confirmation email before I put anything out there.
Instead, I’ll share something that I got in the mail today.
And yes, Huzzah! the mail finally showed up today for the first time in like over a week. The trash also got picked up finally! The trash to be honest was beginning to worry me as it was getting a wee bit ripe so to speak… humidity and food scraps and whatnot are not conducive to a healthy post-storm Area of Operations…
For whatever reason before the storm, like the Tuesday before the storm hit (which hit late Wednesday night/early Thursday) the County did NOT do it’s regularly scheduled trash pickup, and then failed to get the normal Friday pickup as well. People;’s cans including my own were filled to overflowing, but it seems they got that particular problem unscrewed, so good.
Now?
The mail: I got another gift from a reader in Alaska of all places. He was cleaning out his Paw-Paw’s hunting cabin waaay the Hell up in the North in Alaska recently as Paw-Paw had moved onto a better, tax free setting… meaning he shuffled off this Mortal Coil (deepest sympathies Fren)… He DM’d me as he found, of all things, a case of US DotMil C-Rations INTACT in the cabin. Paw-Paw was a DotMil contractor, and his guess is Paw-Paw had picked these up as ’emergency rats’, stashed them, and forgot about them. Said-Fren offered me one as he knows of my propensity for such cool things.
He sent me one for the museum.
It is, almost absolutely pristine
Not that I’d eat anything in it… well that’s not true…
It has the Accessories pack, and spoon on top. The pack consists of Toilet Paper (about 12 teeny sheets) ‘waterproof’ matches, salt, pepper, powdered creamer, sugar and instant coffee.
Removing the top layer, you then have the B-1 Unit, which has the crackers and what I know to be hard candies in the can. The peanut butter is next to it. Shockingly, you can see the cardboard separator which kept the cans from banging into one another still in situ!
So, taking the first two cans out…
They’re in mint condition. No signs of any degradation. THESE are more than likely edible. Not that I will, but still…
Now, the fruit is Sliced Peaches, and the main, is the Ham and Chopped Eggs.
The peaches are a bit on the rough side. The can is dented up, and the seam is slightly damaged with some rot. A bit of it leaked out onto the cardboard box… Needless to say, not edible at all. This is really the only damage to -any- of the items in the box.
The eggs are ‘swole’ a bit. No obvious damage per se, but I sure as hell won’t be opening them anytime soon, except to maybe safely dispose of the botulism that’s obviously growing therein.
Yeeeeeah the top of that can is definitely bubbled
Maybe I should hold onto it for a future Bio-Warfare Home Brewed WMD? I’m pretty sure that even in 1973 when they were first canned, leastways these were canned, the troops considered them to be a Bio-Weapon of some kind… what with the DotMil eggs of ALL ages producing some of the worse ass-gas known to humanity.
Bio-War INDEED!
Over all, this is a really nice and extremely rare item to add to my BCE Museum of War.
It now sits thusly:
As you can see, I got a really nice set of “Military Meal Examples”
As you can see, a K Ration “Supper Meal” that’s complete (that will be another poast on that one later), 4 single cans of C Rations, to include a White Bread, another peanut butter, a B-2 Unit which is the same as a B-1, except it has coco-powder, and the Holy Grail of C Rats, a Pristine Pound Cake. The 5th can in the front of the pile is a rare alcohol gel-filled C Ration Stove. I found that on eBay a ways back for like $7.
The MREs were donated by another one of you deplorables, and the Omelet with Ham gets special distinction as that was my personal favorite MRE believe it or not. Great and fond memories
Good Times.
Great Times actually.
So, what was your favorite DotMil Meal if’n you had one?
More Later
Big Country
Tortellini in tomato sauce.
Mint brownie.
Chocolate-covered graham cracker
Korean canned kimchi. Used to trade our DotMil stuff for it.
https://en.namu.wiki/w/%EC%A0%84%ED%88%AC%EC%8B%9D%EB%9F%89/%ED%95%9C%EA%B5%AD%EA%B5%B0
You LIKED the vomlet? Can’t say I’m surprised lol.
For me it was the Tortellini or Chicken Fajita. Honorable mention for the beef stew and potato cheese soup.
Holy Grail of MRE dessert (circa 2008-2012) was always the spiced pound cake. Tasted like Christmas in a foil pouch. Skittle niggers are just wrong.
My brother flew Hueys in the Army in the early 80s and he always brought me a box or two of MREs. I was like 15 so it was all cool to me. I do remember a canned Salisbury Steak kind of thing I dug.
I was one of the few that didn’t complain about ‘Green Eggs and Spam’. The only one I didn’t care for was the beef and shrapnel (potatoes) as it was really greasy. I think my favorite was beef steak or turkey loaf. I remember making a light out of the peanut butter by pouring the bug juice on it and setting it on fire.
I can tell you what was my most hated MRE – Beef Stew.
During the SFQC, we had a resupply drop during the Robin Sage exercise. I was the team XO, and I took a team member and some G’s out to get the bundles. Got them, no problem. They were the team’s chow for the next few weeks.
Got back to the G-base, opened the MRE’s to issue them, and the cadre had replaced EVERY meal in EVERY case with Beef Stew. Absolutely diabolical. Nothing but Beef Stew for weeks.
And this was hard work too. The guys back at supply had to take all the meals and swap them around in order to fuck us all.
I didn’t eat Beef Stew for years.
I was a corpsman with 1st Tanks when they were still at Camp Pendleton in the early 80s. We were still using C-rats. Switched over to MREs sometime while I was there and I don’t think anyone like them very much compared to the cans.
Anyway, we were spending a few days at a range for gun quals and eating C-rats. I was minding my own business, sleeping as usual, on the bleachers that were there for dog and pony shows. The boys had a big fire going made out of ammo boxes. Next thing I know I heard in the back of my mind a subtle “pop” and about ten seconds later cries of “CORPSMAN! DOC!”.
One of the idiots threw a sealed can of peanut butter in the fire and it decided to explosively disassemble throwing lava hot peanut butter all over a few of the jarheads (I say that with the utmost affection… stationed with the USMC was the best time of my navy service).
Between rounds of laughter I managed to get them cleaned off and treated with some silvadene and a lot of band-aids. Oh, and Motrin of course. Was still prescription then but I carried a bunch of it in my unit 1 along with flexeril for those night I slept on a tank fender.
Spaghetti w/ meat sauce
Chili mac
Tuna w/ noodles
Chicken w/ rice
All of the above heated with the cheese packet swirled in as well as the Tabasco for the tuna and chicken. Good eating.
I ain’t picky there was very few I would turn my nose up at…until they started giving us those experimental vegetarian meals for lunch in Kandahar. God those sucked. Wouldn’t touch any of them. Prepackaged like a MRE but not the same company.
I would get the old lady to send me ramen noodles, sardines, tuna, and salmon through the Mail. If we weren’t out on a mission I came in and ate a bowl of ramen and one of those mixed in.
Spent the summer of 1979 at Fort BRAGG, NC. They fed us C-Rats when we were out in the field.
Ham & Eggs, Chopped was one of my favorites.
Knew a stripper that loved them MREs. Met her as a teen Navy Wife when hubby was on a WestPAC and followed her career to the club across the street from Housing. Gifting an MRE did much to ensure a successful landing and subsequent insertion. So have always had a soft spot for those colon cloggers. Should put condoms in them for SE Asia deployments as well.
Pretty much anything was okay – except for anything described as “pressed formed meat”. There wasn’t enough Tabasco sauce in that itty bitty bottle to make them edible.
A little further back- the corn flake bar. Everyone thought the first two one ate were pretty good … and then they became to boring and dry, almost impossible to swallow.
Pappy used to have a wall of those and we picked out all the Chicklets, Hersheys, bros got the cigarette 2 packs, the crackers would rock with a slice of cheese which wasn’t included.
He finally put up a hand written hands off this means you sign.
LMFAO!
During the great blizzard of 77-78 he confiscated bros ounce of Maui Wowie and when they eventually found it, it was a few grams short.
Everybody needed release/escape under CPUSA (D) comrade Jimmeh Carta and the stagflation misery index, I was just a lil’ shaver then.
Shit gets done in FLA because of Ronny D and someone with Photochop skills should put him on a container of Sunny D with FLA flag.
Keep calm and no room for commie.
The Pork Chow Mein was probably my favorite MRE. Of course they stopped making it. Bastards.
ah the C rat..
hueys
T-10’s
M-16A1’s
M-60’s
steel pots
black boots
junglies
bdu’s
white under shorts
pin-on rank
Blood rank with those pin-ons…fuck. Always right on my clavicles.
Yep to all of those. Except the shorts. We went commando in the tropics. Kept your balls from getting fungus but made it easier for the leeches. Oh well, trade offs. My fav was spaghetti and meatball. I would eat it cold right out of the can. Never got tired of it. We had a tall can of cookies that we would use after empty to make sand stoves to heat coffee with. Fill with sand, dribble in some fuel from a nearby huey and viola.
Steel pots were some useful kit. You could wash your whole body and shave with it as a basin. And since I was 0341 my issue jungles were the Vibram soles with no spike protection. Best boots I ever had in my life.
My first go around was ROTC summer camp and VN Era C-Rats. That was field chow for my first few years as a grunt. We figured out the weight of a little stove , a bottle of Tobasco and a container or garlic salt was well worth it. With some imagination, some horse trading and putting your palate on hold, you could whip up something edible, given time. Sadly, many days were eating cold beanie-weenies out of the can while you were on the move.
We were also there for the transition to the first generation MREs. Meh.
Like Crocodile Dundee said, ‘you can live on it, but it tastes like shit’. But they beat medium rare lizard on the spit .