Via #2 Son, here's a great overview of the WWII Field Kitchen. It's a lot more interesting than you might think. As they say, amateurs talk strategy but professionals talk logistics. A logistics system that gets hot chow in the troops even at the front is something that will help you win.
I hadn't known that they ran on gasoline. That would eliminate the need to find firewood and would almost eliminate smoke (don't want the Bad Guys to use your kitchen chimney to walk the artillery in), but you obviously need gas. Nobody had a gasoline supply like we did, so I expect other army's field kitchens were very different.
"an army travels on its stomach" a truism well shown here.
ReplyDeleteInteresting video. And I see the Mermite cans are STILL around!
ReplyDeleteSame history re-enactment group has a ww2 German field kitchen, and it worked on anything available, wood, coal, dried camel dung in Africa, straw... has a nice talk about the German field kitchen trailer.
ReplyDelete@Patch - if you ever get back to the Boston area, go see the WW2 history museum in Natick. The place is fascinating. They have an M4 Sherman, a Higgins boat, a two-bed surgical "M*A*S*H" setup, and all kinds of goodies from all sides of the conflict. Oh . . and most of the displays are HANDS-ON so you can handle the hardware. I think they even have a real DeLisle carbine.
ReplyDeleteThe MASH sorta kinda rolled out in WWII (August 1945 was the date I saw; the pioneering but the concept wasn't fully implemented until Korea. While there were surgeons attached to combat units in WWII, it wasn't as comprehensive an operation as a full fledged MASH which provided multispecialty surgery for the casualties. (The great cardiovascular surgeon Michael DeBakey was instrumental in developing the concept; the author of MASH, Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr., was a board qualified surgeon by the time he served in Korea.)
ReplyDeleteFor an excellent description of a MASH's WWII ancestor, read Brendan Phibbs' memoir, which was published under two titles: The Other Side of Time: A Combat Surgeon in WWII and Our War for the World: A Memoir of Life and Death on the Front Lines in WW II. There are photos in the latter edition. He graduated from medical school shortly before Pearl Harbor, and he didn't even begin his residency until after the war.
His clinic was an ambulance that rode with the headquarters company of the Twelfth Armored Division's Combat Command B. His book covers his stateside training with his unit, their training in the UK in the final runup to Operation Overlord, and then, from November 1944 in Alsace-Lorraine, combat.
When the invasion of Germany began after the Battle of the Bulge, Combat Command B was the leading element of the southern pincer of the invasion of Germany. Dr. Phibbs served in the relief operation for the survivors of Dachau.
Had one of them stove at a boy scout camp out. Smelled funny, the gas burners.
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