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12/29/2018

Meals Ready to Eat (Or Not)

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PictureA poster, by artist Vernon Grant, issued by the U.S. War Food Administration in 1944 to discourage civilian food waste. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
​As we recover from our holiday feasts, David Hoefer, co-editor of The Last Resort, reflects on the meals historically available to our troops in battle. If you would like to submit a blog post for Clearing the Fog, contact us here.

I’ve recently been reading Theodore Roosevelt’s book The Rough Riders about his volunteer cavalry unit that fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. It’s very much an adulatory view of the conflict but, beneath the pro forma sentiments, there remains plenty of interest for the historically minded. 

One point that comes across is the sheer difficulty of making war in modern times, regardless of the goals or objectives involved. The projection of large forces over great distances calls for sophisticated logistical systems—systems that are often assumed to exist even when they don’t. Roosevelt remarks more than once about the inadequacies of transport that confronted his men both going to and fighting at the fluid Cuban battlefront. 

As for the food—well, let’s just say there weren’t a lot of farm-fresh homecooked spreads. Meals consisted of hardtack and sometimes rotten meat, with nary a fruit or vegetable in sight, and shortages of coffee and sugar, too. 

Pud Goodlett faced similar challenges as he fought with Patton’s Third Army in Europe during the closing months of World War II. Winter weather and the Wehrmacht were the primary obstacles, of course, but maintaining adequate nourishment—or simply getting fed—would have been a major concern. 

The U.S. Army’s answer was the K-ration, an individually packaged lightweight meal that supplied sufficient calories for soldiers in the field, at the expense of taste, variety, and other virtues of civilized eating. 
 
To experience a K-ration meal—vicariously, of course—watch the video below. The contemporary narrator seems to have a genuine appreciation for the K-ration, which he examines in considerable detail. I wonder if Pud felt the same way, as he wolfed down the biscuits and smoked the cigarettes in some anonymous foxhole always too close to an increasingly desperate enemy? 

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4 Comments
Bob McWilliams
12/31/2018 06:52:56 pm

“It was a brave man who first ate an oyster” Jonathan Swift

Crazy is the man who eats from a75 year old K1 ration.

Hilarious

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David Hoefer
12/31/2018 07:28:56 pm

Amen. Why does all the food look so strange? Because it's moldy! But those are the risks you might be willing to take when you're already under the influence…

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Timothy Cooper
1/1/2019 04:58:56 pm

David:
What a terrific blog. I remember when I was in the navy and junior officer of the deck, one night in the north Atlantic in February. It was about 3am, cold, and desolate. Suddenly, our great cooks appeared with huge mugs of split pea soup for all of us on duty that night. Let me tell you that nothing I've had since has tasted so good. Obviously, things have changed since WWII. Happy New Year.
Tim

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David Hoefer
1/2/2019 10:59:46 am

Thanks, Tim. Appreciate the comment and the sentiment. Happy New Year to you too.

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    Between the debilitating effects of age and the 24-hour crush of mind-bending news, my brain is frequently in a fog. Nonetheless. I'll occasionally try to sweep aside the ashy gray matter and shed some light on what's going on at Murky Press. Perhaps together we can also gain a little insight into how we can better use words to organize and clarify the world around us.

    Cheers! 
    Sallie Showalter, Murky Press 

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