PRESERVING A MILITARY LEGACY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
The following Reflection represents SP4 Joseph De Frank’s legacy of their military service from 1966 to 1968. If you are a Veteran, consider preserving a record of your own military service, including your memories and photographs, on Togetherweserved.com (TWS), the leading archive of living military history. The Service Reflections is an easy-to-complete self-interview, located on your TWS Military Service Page, which enables you to remember key people and events from your military service and the impact they made on your life.
Where did you enjoy the best chow during your military service and what was the best meal you remember? Where did you experience your worst chow?:
In 1966, during Basic Training at Ft. Hood, TX, we had a fantastic Thanksgiving Dinner, including shrimp cocktail with hot sauce and crackers, roast turkey with bread stuffing and giblet gravy and cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, buttered mixed vegetables, assorted relish tray, hot Parker House rolls with butter, fruit cake, mincemeat pie, pumpkin pie w/whipped cream, assorted fresh fruit, nuts, and candy, milk, tea and coffee. I still have a copy of the menu.
During my tour in Vietnam as a combat medic, C-rations were our sole source of nourishment except for an occasional visit to a base camp or a rare holiday delivery of a hot meal by chopper. The usual varieties included Beans & Wieners, Boned Chicken, Chicken & Noodles, Turkey Loaf, Pork Slices, Beef Steak, Spaghetti & Meatballs, Meatballs & Beans, Meat Loaf, Beef Steak W/Potatoes & Gravy, Spiced Beef, Ham Slices, Ham & Lima Beans (least desired and known to most as Ham & Mothers), Ham & Eggs Chopped, White Bread, Peaches, Pears, Apricots, Applesauce, Fruit Cocktail, Fruit Cake, Pecan Cake Roll, Crackers, Cheese Spread, Candy & Peanut Butter. The Ham and Eggs Chopped weren’t bad cold, but most meals needed to be heated or doctored up with Heinz-57 Sauce or Hot Sauce sent from home, to be palatable. Whenever I got stuck with Ham & Mothers, I usually saved it for a rainy day and then heated it, adding a can of cheese spread, stirring until melted, crumbling four crackers into the mixture, blending thoroughly, and eating it after the crackers had absorbed all the excess moisture. The Fruit Cake was horrible. My favorite dessert was Peaches with Pound Cake, which was always a treat after a long day in the bush. Cans of pound cake, peaches and fruit cocktail were prized and worth their weight in gold because only one of each was included in every case of 12 meals.
We had a nice dinner in a nearby base camp for Thanksgiving 1967. I still have the menu, which included: Shrimp Cocktail, Crackers, Roast Turkey, Turkey Gravy, Cornbread Dressing, Cranberry Sauce, Mashed Potatoes, Glazed Sweet Potatoes, Buttered Mixed Vegetables, Assorted Crisp Relishes, Hot Rolls, Butter, Fruitcake, Mincemeat Pie, Pumpkin Pie w/Whipped Topping, Assorted Nuts, Candy, Fresh Fruits, Tea w/Lemon and Milk.
Christmas 1967, in the field, was another story. We got the word that a hot meal was being choppered out to us and were quite happy to find that it included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, greens, coffee, pie and even ice cream delivered right out there in the boonies, in green Mermite food cans, by Huey. It was rather difficult to handle a 7-course dinner in a mess kit, but I didn’t want to pass up the ice cream. So they piled it on top of the other courses and I ate it first before it melted. It was the strangest dinner I ever ate, but somehow, it was awfully good.
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Thanks for a great share about some trying times, Joseph. I am so happy to see TWS recognize your excellent writing.