C rations

[RazorPete]

They were definitely an acquired taste but we had to eat them every time we went out in the field, which in an Infantry unit was most of the time. I think they got phased out in 1980 and we used to joke that they had sat in storage since WWII, ha ha.

This wikipedia page says the real name was Meal, Combat Rations, or MCI, but everyone I know just called them C-rations, to distinguish them from B-rations (remember those horrible dried beefsteaks and porkchops?) or A-rations, the 'good stuff' they brought in the field from the mess hall in green 'mermaid' containers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Combat,_Individual_ration

Of all the different C-rations, I liked the 'John Wayne Bars' which was the name we used to give the circular candy bars that came in the short cans. Those were not bad actually.

Of the meals, the one which was actually quite edible, was the frankfurter and beans, aka 'beenie weenie'.

If anyone else remembers these things, maybe you could add some of your favorites and/or share some of the nicknames used.

thanks

Pete

 

[Gray Wolf]

I always liked the pound cake,
and there was a name for the ham and lima beans, no one liked those.

 

[arghblech]

My pop claims you could make a fine cooking fire using the oil on top of C-rat peanut butter. I never tried myself.

 

[AZShaver]

Pound cake, the cookie, John Wayne bars and chicken noodle were good. Franks and beans and hamburger steak ok, hame and eggs yuck. The biggest treasure was having someone in your unit who actually liked ham and lima beans. (in 6 years I met one)
Peanut butter would glue most things.
How about crackers and "cheese food, plastic" great stuff huh?

 

[Hawkeye5]

I was so damn tired of C rations that by the last month of my tour I could only eat the meat balls from the spaghetti & meat balls with cheese melted over them and the peaches with pound cake.

To make things worse most of the meals were packed by Blue Star Foods out of Council Bluffs, Ia. My home state!

Later in life I was the underwriter that handled the insurance for Blue Star. Talk about irony.

 

[Topgumby]

Hmmm...we called them "Gorilla Cookies", not "John Wayne Bars". The little can opener was a "John Wayne" or, after he passed on, a "Dead Duke".

Getting the fruit cocktail was like winning the lottery.

You could get a good fire going with the peanut butter.

There were many nicknames that I won't post here.

 

[_JP_]

One thing that I learned about the old C-Rats real quick was that they are all better when hot! So I kept a small can of Sterno in my pack when we were going to spend the day training in the field. Come meal time, I would quickly set up some stones and start heating the main course while I ate the rest of the stuff first, and then enjoyed a hot main course.

The A-Rations were something that I helped with occasionally while I was working in mess halls part time (civilian KP) as a college student. We would load up those containers into the back of a deuce-and-half, jump in, and head out to the battalion in the field. The plus to that for us KPs was that we didn't have to clean the mud off of the floors in the mess hall that the troops brought with them at lunch time.

I still have some P38s from those days. And I'm still fast with them.

 

[RazorPete]

p38s, yes those things were handy!

Speaking of handy things, I do still have my steel canteen cup, now thats a versatile piece of equipment!

 

[michiganlover]

So I take it based upon the comments above, the current MRE's are better quality food overall??

A family member of mine used to bring my father "surplus" MRE's from his various yearly training exercises in the 1990's. My father actually liked these, and would take them hunting.

The self container chemical heating pack was always of interest being I was a 14 year old kid at that point.......

 

[The Nid Hog]

Just like the switch from the steel pot to the Wehrmacht helmet, I caught the tail end of the C-ration era. I liked the stuff, and it was cool to eat something that had such a long history (to be honest, the Chili Mac in the chow hall had probably been cooking since V-J Day too). There was another "iron ration" that they gave out for cold weather ops--I forgot what it was called. Oblong can with dense energy bars, etc. in it.

The new MREs, at least in their 80s and 90s incarnation, weren't bad either. The ham and chicken loaf was a little creepy and tasted like a soggy version of fruitcake. The dehydrated strawberries were a horror too--they reminded me of fossilized Levi Garrett. Still, they were eaten.

 

[DougK]

I just missed C-rations, but I remember eating the tail end of the first MRE run when I was a cadet; see the Wikipedia entry for MREs if you want to relive the horrors of the menus. I can't say I liked any of them very much but they would keep you alive. I don't recall anyone actually eating the tuna and noodles but I saw several fights start over the chocolate nut cake and the maple nut cake desserts. The meals apparently got better after I went inactive in 1998, which is just my luck.

 

[The Nid Hog]

The wiki entry reminded me of Chicken a la King. That stuff looked like vomit.

Anybody ever try the rations from other countries? I was at Camp Fuji one time and the HQ element from a Japanese comm unit came over to say hi. They had run into a couple of my guys on patrol earlier and ended up swapping meals. I guess that they talked about things and felt sorry for us. As near as I could tell, they thought that we ran out of food and were surviving on some kind of survival rations. Anyway, they brought us cases of chow that included some delicious canned salmon, cans of something like red beans and rice but made with sticky rice, and a couple of big jars of homemade pickled vegetables.

 

[MoreSaltThanPepper]

Anyone else ever have the dubious pleasure of the pre-cooked, shrink wrapped bacon?

 

[GFlanagan3]

p38s, yes those things were handy!

Speaking of handy things, I do still have my steel canteen cup, now thats a versatile piece of equipment!

for MANY years I carried my dads p-38 on my key ring..guess I read to many stories about being trapped in a room of cans with no way to open them etc.... .I'd still love to have one but I am sure it'd constitute a 'deadly weapon'

 

[TheScalpel]

thank god C rats were gone by the time I was in.. I actually 'enjoyed' a few of the MRE's... I was partial to ham slice... tuna w noodles was terrible but it did come with the chocolate nut cake!

 

[narativesoul]

never had a c-ration but i really liked the spaghetti MRE. especially once you used the heater

 

[TheScalpel]

yup, spaghetti mre's were good... corned beef hash was good, too.. or any mre that came with the cheese spread... Kept ya stopped up until that first real meal... grin

 

[KenS]

I was never in the military, but ate lots of surplus field rations. I was young and just getting by in the late 60's. Powered eggs & pound cake; yum, yum, :-(

Ken.

 

[Alacrity59]

I was amused by the olive drab tins of cheese and tubes of butter that were included in the rations in the Canadian military in the 80's.

 

[Hawkeye5]

I guess what you younger guys call the John Wayne bar was not included in the ones I ate. We had Hersey's Tropical Chocolate bars. The things were uneatable. We called them Yard Bars because we gave them to the Montianyard kids.
But then we used the three prong flash suppressor on the M16 as a wire cutter to open the C ration case and C4 to warm them up.