Reminds of a story I heard from a friend named Fred who was a cook in the Marines in Vietnam. The commanding Officer decided that every Marine was going to get a full Thanksgiving dinner no matter where they were. All the forward bases, the units that had been subsisting on C-rats for months, everyone.
So the food was cooked, packed in Mermite cans, loaded on helicopters and trucks and taken out to the field. Fred, being one of the lower ranked Marines, was assigned to fly along and deliver. It went pretty well until late in the day as they were descending to land and they started taking fire from the jungle.
They hit pretty hard and everyone got out and scrambled for the trenches. He piled in beside a Marine that was firing back. When a lull occurred, this Marine, dirty, skinny, unshaven, turns to him with a hard stare and asks, "What's on that bird? We need ammo, mortars, grenades. What did you bring?"
Fred said that for a few moments he was not afraid of the Vietnamese but he was very afraid of this Marine. But he looked him in the eye and said, "Turkey dinner, all the sides, and ice cream."
And the two of them sat in the trench and laughed until they cried.
My Dad served on the USS Wisconsin (BB-64) in Korea. He said they nearly always ate well, especially at the holidays. It must have been true. He went in weighing 135lbs and came out 4 years later weighing 180.
Reminds of a story I heard from a friend named Fred who was a cook in the Marines in Vietnam. The commanding Officer decided that every Marine was going to get a full Thanksgiving dinner no matter where they were. All the forward bases, the units that had been subsisting on C-rats for months, everyone.
ReplyDeleteSo the food was cooked, packed in Mermite cans, loaded on helicopters and trucks and taken out to the field. Fred, being one of the lower ranked Marines, was assigned to fly along and deliver. It went pretty well until late in the day as they were descending to land and they started taking fire from the jungle.
They hit pretty hard and everyone got out and scrambled for the trenches. He piled in beside a Marine that was firing back. When a lull occurred, this Marine, dirty, skinny, unshaven, turns to him with a hard stare and asks, "What's on that bird? We need ammo, mortars, grenades. What did you bring?"
Fred said that for a few moments he was not afraid of the Vietnamese but he was very afraid of this Marine. But he looked him in the eye and said, "Turkey dinner, all the sides, and ice cream."
And the two of them sat in the trench and laughed until they cried.
My Dad served on the USS Wisconsin (BB-64) in Korea. He said they nearly always ate well, especially at the holidays. It must have been true. He went in weighing 135lbs and came out 4 years later weighing 180.
ReplyDelete