World War II in Medina County, Ohio by Eli R. Beachy

Author:Eli R. Beachy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE FEEDING OF THE MASSES

November 22, 2012

The United States military would consider this its greatest challenge. The average dogface trooper thought that it was the greatest secret weapon the Germans and Japanese had in their arsenals. Historians today remain amazed at how it was even possible, the feeding of the millions of American troopers in World War II both home and abroad.

Today is Thanksgiving, the annual event when our relatives inflict themselves on us in the name of gratitude. At our house, the cats have formed up around the stove, waiting for the arrival of the giant robin as my B.W. whips potatoes into a frenzy. By three o’clock this afternoon, the felines will be assuming more human characteristics beside me, passed out from gluttony, and the plates will be bare. We will feed ten today. For the army cooks of World War II, it was more like ten thousand.

Ten thousand is a rough approximation of the size of an army division of combat troops. Just one division, three or more of which would make up a corps. Three corps make an army. Not the army, just one army of several under the Stars and Stripes. Thousands of troopers expecting turkey and potatoes and expecting them hot no matter where they were, no matter when it was, and that was just the army and its air corps. There was the navy and its Marines as well, millions of meals for thousands of days.

For a stationary army, feeding the masses is a difficult task but far from impossible. The Civil War truly created the concept of the field kitchen for combat troopers. By World War II, it was an art form of ovens where the quality of the food was directly related to the waistline of the cook. It was when the troops were on the move that chow at times would become a soldier’s worst nightmare, and it was called the Rats. Not a rodent, though; Rats was short for rations, contained units of food to be eaten in the field under combat conditions. Today called Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), the Rats of World War II were categorized as C, D or K. Long before a president’s wife deemed it necessary to reform American eating habits, all three Rats filled daily nutritional needs. Whether or not it was edible was up to every dogface to decide.

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