Worst Rations?

Site Issues 2008 Archive Room
#1

We had a thing in the early 1970s in a C pack which was some sort of biscuit, if you were used to biscuits about the size of a very small paperback book made out of concrete and which was largely impervious to moisture, teeth, the point or heel of a bayonet, and a tank track.

It softened marginally during the day as we spread it with jam and whatever else was in the ration pack and licked it off the concrete block.

Someone once thought we were mistakenly eating the hexamine tablets from our stoves, but upon careful investigation it transpired that (a) the hexamine tablets burnt and our biscuits wouldn’t and (b) the hexamine tablets tasted better, and were much softer on the teeth.

It might have been a survival ration. Anyone who could survive it was a survivor. :smiley:

#2

The Russian ones are supposed to be pretty grim - Chevan, you got any comments on them?
Current UK ones are actually pretty good, much as it pains me to say so. You can even get a rather good curry in the 24 hour ones!

#3

Perhaps, but who wants a curry that lasts for 24 hours? :smiley:

#4

LOL Sounds like “hardtack” that the US and CS soldiers had to boil to make edible during the American Civil War…

This beckons a question, am I the only one that on very rare occasions eats such rations fare as “Bully Beef,” Spam, or tinned corn beef just to experience the little slice of horror that were war rations?

#5

That picture looks about right.

The smaller one on the bottom left looks like one that’s been through the digestive system, completely unaffected apart from having all the nutrition taken out of it.

I think I might have had one of the biscuits in the picture but been unable to puncture it, the average 7.62mm round lacking sufficient power. Something had to cause the cracks in them.

Although the biscuits I broke my teeth on in the 1970s were probably produced before the American Civil War.

I don’t know.

But if you are the only person on the planet who does it, you should seek professional help. :smiley:

P.S. Have you noticed that the top left corner of the top left biscuit has an outline like the tiger on the tank in your signature?

Spooky, huh?

#6

Beats the rest of the contents of the rat pack hands down! Something & beans followed by biscuits brown with “pate” versus another curry - I know what I’d choose!

#7

Well, that reminds me.

We were on the second generation of MREs when I went in, and they have evolved into something mostly palatable and they’ve taken pains to eliminate the grosser menu options. in the very early 90s, I think we were on the second generation of the things after C-rats were replaced. The second generation included mini-bottles of tabasco sauce, which when mixed in made almost anything bearable, and some of the options like chicken and rice were pretty good.

The only ones that made me sick were the franks and beans. The beans were okay, but the franks when cold, consisting of some indescribable meat product, and had some disturbing gelatin coating them that made we want to vomit.

The third generation came out with a small green reactive chemical sheet that would heat a bag of water in which you could place your packet of whatever into it, and heating them improved everything. They also began stuffing them with commercial candy bars during the Gulf War. While in the Reserve around 1995 or 96, I was eating M&Ms when I noticed the exp. date on them was 1993…:smiley:

#8

I wouldn’t be surprised, I wonder what the shelf life was?

I don’t know.

But if you are the only person on the planet who does it, you should seek professional help. :smiley:

The least of the questions regarding my mental health…

P.S. Have you noticed that the top left corner of the top left biscuit has an outline like the tiger on the tank in your signature?

Spooky, huh?

I’m not sure which would be more intimidating to face in combat…

#9

About the same as the Egyptian pyramids.

#10

No… I say fossils.

#11

Still valuable weapons in hand to hand combat for when you run out of ammo in close quarters battle. Even better than an entrenching tool!

Don’t we have a related thread in the WWI section on “Bully Beef?” I wonder if that stuff was palpable or God awful…

#12

Never had bully beef, but I think a thing we had here called Camp Pie was its son. Mostly sawdust held together by fat, some of it from animals. Very popular in Scout camps I attended as a kid.

I had a great idea years ago for a weekend lunch for my kids and got a tin of this vileness and sliced it and fried it, because it used to taste alright fried in Scout camps and frying got rid of some of the fat so you could fry the onions and tomatoes without adding any fat to the pan.

My brilliant idea resulted in two kids rejecting it on the first bite and me on my first bite agreeing with them.

I don’t know how we ever ate it, but it was common fare hot or cold when I was a kid. So were things like mutton and tripe and lamb brains and kidney and lamb liver, most of which would make me vomit now and a few went close then, although a properly done bit of lamb liver (lamb’s fry) and bacon under gravy with bubble and squeak (sort of a vegetable hash brown, which stands in the same realtionship to McDonalds’ hash browns as McDonalds’ products do to food) is still alright if you can find someone who knows how to cook it properly.

Where this relates to WWII is that, in Oz at least, people generally were used to much stronger and gamier flavours than we are now.

When I was a kid a lot of stuff was fried in beef dripping (fat). Like most people we used to have some enamelled tin bowls that we poured fat off mutton chops and anything else into. It started with a couple of inches of water in it and the fat congealed on top while the debris fell into the water, so the fat was clean. Then the fat was used for cooking later.

A lot of people here in the 1930s Depression thought bread and dripping, usually bread fried in dripping, was a bit of a luxury. Just starch and fat, but it filled you up. Just like bully beef and biscuits.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, chicken was a luxury for Christmas and other special occasions. Mutton or lamb were the main meat dishes, roasted, fried, or grilled, with beef occasionally. Every meat dish was served with vegetables which were boiled until they lost their colour and became mushy, which we thought of as ‘cooked’.

Bully beef probably wasn’t quite so bad for a lot of Aussies used to a very different diet and range of tastes to nowadays.

#13

I think Bully Beef was old, tough, stringy, mutton. I remember making lots of rude comments about the U.S. rations used in the 70’s (some were from the 50’s) but out in the field, mostly in winter, even these dregs of Atlantis tasted pretty good. Armored units being wide ranging, had to wait until the cook jeep could catch up to our Lager positions, usually hours late, 4-6 hrs was not uncommon. At that point that hard tack was looking tasty.
We took up the habit of bringing along alot of our own food, it made life easier.

#14

I heard of stories where they mentioned K-Rations. What’s in those?

#15

The K-rat’s were emergency, high calorie “chocolate” bar rations I believe. To be consumed in battle conditions, but from what I’ve read, they weren’t exactly Hershey bars…

#16

Thought I would chime in myself, but I really like Spam and tinned corn beef. Yikes, I guess I have no class, huh? :shock::shock::shock:

I could never stand the Chicken-ala-King when the MRE’s first came out…ughh…especially cold, but the MRE bread when combined with the Ham slice wasn’t too bad as long as I had some hot sauce.

#17

Did someone ask about K rats?

I found this if it helps…haven’t read it all yet:

http://www.usarmymodels.com/ARTICLES/Rations/krations.html

Also, how many you guys gotta p-38 on your key ring still? I do…

#18

Apparently it was beef. Although maybe nobody could tell the difference. :wink:

Tin of Corned Beef (better known as ‘Bully Beef’ to friend and foe alike). Comes in the tan-and-green early war Australian military labeled tin. Of course, this is the proper key-turn variety tin with the silver-coloured ends as made in Argentina for the Australian Armed forces to this day. Ready to “pour” from the tin when the temperatures reach 110 degrees and up!
http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-food/ww2-rat-pax.htm

Don’t know if you have corned beef in the US (or even want it :D). In its non-tinned form it was a (?salt?) pickled lump of beef, usually silverside, which if I remember correctly in my childhood in the 1950’s - early 1960s butchers pulled out of a pickling barrel in the coolroom. It was cooked by simmering it in water with spices and or vegetables like onion and carrots. Cooked long and slow it was very tender. Not a bad feed when served with some sort of white sauce or horseradish or mustard (proper hot English mustard, not that weak bright yellow baby poo you Yanks use :D)

We found that the 1937 Pattern basic pouches, one either side on the front, foolishly intended by the designers and the army for nuisance items like ammunition, were just the right size to hold canned food. I liked canned fruit, mostly peaches and apricots, because it tastes good cold and you can drink the sweet juice. Other blokes liked things like canned sausages and vegetables or Irish Stew, which tasted just like some of the issued rations when cold. Or hot. However, the commercial version had more colour and briefly chewable lumps in it, but it didn’t alter the taste much. :smiley:

#19

Can’t pin down the details, but I seem to recall that during the war the ?British? did some research which showed that younger sailors had a much higher death rate than older sailors after being shipwrecked and drifting in lifeboats or Carley Floats, and that part of the solution to improve their chances was to put high energy chocolate bars in the survival rations.

#20

As you were, sir. As you were! Corn beef is in fact widely available here and is sort of considered (probably wrongly) an Irish dish. I say wrongly, because I’m pretty sure that few Irish in the 18th, 19th centuries would have had access to such a delicacy and probably wouldn’t have had access to any meat at all. Although, my maternal grandfather, whom I never met, was the son of an Irish father and a German mother which probably goes a long way to explaining my cantankerous temperament loved the stuff, so perhaps it was more popular in the early part of the last century there? It is usually the fare of the Saint Patrick’s Day holiday in the US were it is boiled with cabbage in addition to the carrots and potatoes (usually red), and you usually see it prominently displayed in the supermarkets around here in various packs or at the butchers kiosk in March.

Corn beef is also the key fare at a lot of “Irish” bars and pubs here. Some of the Irish bars here a little more than what the actual Irish might derisively call “Lucky Charms Irish” (a leprechaun shilled breakfast cereal almost comically offensive to some) Americanized sports bar spin offs with some hints of Irish culture and Guinness on tap, and some are pretty rough and tumble old school pubs. Anyways, they sometimes serve it in a “Reuben” sandwich on rye bread, with Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing open faced or regular…

And I agree about the runny French’s mustard for little kids. However, just like out beer situation, we have regional brands of mustard that are pretty good, like Weber’s horseradish mustard which can be found at Wegmans markets in the US…

We found that the 1937 Pattern basic pouches, one either side on the front, foolishly intended by the designers and the army for nuisance items like ammunition, were just the right size to hold canned food. I liked canned fruit, mostly peaches and apricots, because it tastes good cold and you can drink the sweet juice. Other blokes liked things like canned sausages and vegetables or Irish Stew, which tasted just like some of the issued rations when cold. Or hot. However, the commercial version had more colour and briefly chewable lumps in it, but it didn’t alter the taste much. :smiley:

Just like all kit can be made readily useful. A lot of guys would carry various canned stuff and I too found canned fruit to be a good field snack. As were Chef Boyardee ravioli and spaghetti…