The L1A1 Armourer

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Some of us former members of the U.S. military remember the old "C"-rations of the Korean War and Vietnam War days. [Some of us even remember eating Korean War-made "C"-rations during the Vietnam War.] Some of us remember the "Long Range Patrol Ration" -- aka freeze-dried dog food in a platic bag. Now we have the [in]famous, "Meals, Ready-to-Eat" -- or Meals, Rejected by Everyone, if you prefer. For our Aussie friends on the "sharp end" of the spear, I submit this review of your current military ration sent to me by a former US Navy SEAL. Without further ado . . .

The Rat Pack

Recently I was given an Australian Army Rat Pack, which is short for Rations Pack. Be aware it's not a pack of army rats.

It contains only one day worth of highly nutritional and scrumptious food like momma used to make, at least that's what they claim on the instruction sheets. In reality it's a big bag of crap designed in a lab to deliver enough food and vitamins for the modern soldier who is too busy getting shot at and hasn't the time to cook a delicious healthy meal for him and his friends. The information sheet says it best:

The CR1M consists of two main meals, a midday snack and a number of sundry items. It is suggested that the two main components be used for breakfast and evening meals, and that a muesli bar and sweet biscuits be used for the midday snack. The CR1M has been designed to ensure that you receive enough food and vitamins each day, therefore is it desirable that all food in the pack is eaten.

There are five different daily packs available, labelled A - E, each containing different menus.

I ate Pack A and it was f****d up....

	The Full Pack Here is a photo of the full pack laid out on the table. When you first unpack it you think, "how could I eat all this in one day?" It's a valid question, but not due to the amount of food, more the quality. Beef & vegetables (Dutch style) Minced beef with spaghetti Lemon & Lime, Orange beverage powder Shortbread biscuits Apricot fruit grains Apricot & Coconut muesli bar Anzac muesli bar Juicy Fruit Peach fruit spread Tomato sauce Freeze Dried rice Low salt 'cream of chicken' soup Curry powder Diced peaches in a can Jam sandwich biscuit Chocolate drink powder Crispbread crackers Cheddar cheese Tea & Coffee with Condensed milk Candy & Chocolate ration Vegemite Note: cat does not come with pack.

	Chocolate ration First things first, lets get our priorities in order. Obviously I began with the chocolate. Ok so this isn't like normal chocolate, it's a bit tricky because it's super compressed which stops of melting, that's just creepy from the start. What sort of weirdo chocolate doesn't melt?! Ignoring that for the moment I ripped open the pack. It was... different. To begin with it smells funny, and it's covered in some sort of white film as you can see. I like chocolate and nothing much phases me, so I went ahead and tried a bit. IT WENT TO POWDER IN MY MOUTH! I was shocked, as you crunch the chocolate piece, it dissolves into a weird powdery substance somewhat like talcum powder. Ok fine, it's special super compressed technological chocolate, but it really put me off. Not to mention the taste: I can't describe what it tasted like, but it wasn't chocolate. I'm told that the chocolate is designed to be a laxative because the rest of the shit pack really backs up the works. I could only make it through four pieces out of eight before I started hallucinating. Rating: Ew-w-w.

	Beverage Base Powder Next I tried the beverage base powder, this stuff is off putting to begin with but actually pretty good. It's basically powdered cordial and comes in two flavours: lemon & lime, and orange. One sachet makes one litre of "cordial". When you first dissolve the powder it colours the water bright orange like some sort of liquid soccer riot flare. The trick is to close your eyes and think of home while it's dissolving. The most disconcerting thing about this powder is it sterilises your water while providing a refreshing beverage. What kind of . . . cordial sterilises water? Rating: sterilised deliciousness!

	Chocolate Drink Powder This is basically drinking chocolate with sugar mixed in. All you need to do is melt it with a bit of hot water and add milk. Only the packs don't contain milk. I tried to make a chocolate drink with condensed milk but the sweetness took my head clean off and made my piss blue. Next I tried it with milk and it was delicious. But to replicate true battlefield conditions I tried it with just water... I think I'll stick to milk. Chocolate water doesn't make me want to go out and defend the country. Rating: yuk-k-k!

	Processed Cheddar Cheese This stuff is totally bizarre, it's a CAN of CHEESE. Getting over that I dipped in and had a shot, I would give it a 50% rating of acceptability. The texture is that of either two-pack polyester automotive putty or perfect girly boobs - soft yet firm. It sort of peels off in vague sheets and is whiter than white. My initial assessment is there's not much 'cheese' or 'cheddar' going on, but a fuck load of 'processed'. However, having said that, it's surprisingly edible along with your delicious dehydrated crispbread crackers. I couldn't take much, but if I wasn't so full on beverage base powder I would have eaten more. Rating: deceptively acceptable.

	Sweetened Condensed Milk I'll admit I'm not up to date on condensed milk packaging techniques, but I have never seen it in a tube. A green tube at that. Regardless, this is one of the rare treats in the rat pack being both edible and delicious! I sucked the tube dry. Later on I read the information sheet: "After a few months in a tropical climate the condensed milk may become thicker and brownish* in appearance, but it is safe to eat and may be consumed without fear or any ill effects."* Yeah right. There's no way you'd get me to eat a tube of thick slop with the appearance of diarrhoea. Rating: Condensalicious!

	Cream of Chicken This stuff totally cracks me up. How on earth do you get cream out of a chicken? Don't answer that. This comes as a sachet of powder with flecks of what I assume is chicken cream. When hydrated it forms a low salt soup that, like all low salt foods, should not exist. I ate half a teaspoon and felt sick for an hour. I tried to feed it to the cats because they dig chicken but they simply made leg actions as if they were trying to cover it up with soil like a fresh cat turd. Note that these same cats have been witnessed eating and enjoying a piece of four week old meat they found down the side of the stove. Rating: Evil.

	Curry Powder It has the same colouring and texture as the chocolate drink powder above which leads me to believe many soldiers have performed hilarious substitution hijinks in the past with their poor comrades. I never tried this stuff as I don't like normal human curry to begin with, so I was quite sure I wouldn't enjoy evil army death curry. I'm not sure what you're meant to do with this as there's nothing really to make curry out of, do you just eat the powder? Rating: Ha,ha dunno don't care :)

	Freeze Dried Rice Yuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! OK I lied. Eeeeeeeeeevil. You hydrate this with boiling water, the entire process takes 20 minutes. It is considerate of the manufacturers to provide such a wide window of opportunity to change your mind and throw this shit out. Again I did the half teaspoon test and bulked at the idea of eating more. To be honest I just don't want to talk about it, instead I'm going to think of my 'happy place'. Rating: Atomic.

	Apricot Fruit Grains This one baffles me. It's a packet of dried apricot pieces, but they don't look nor taste anything like apricot. The best way to describe it is a packet of the fruit pieces in your muesli which you pick out and throw away. Why would you want a whole packet of it? What do you do with it? The best explanation I can think of is it's used as some sort of covert weapon against the enemy. Rating: baffling.

	Plastic Spoon As you may have noticed, the most hilarious thing about this whole pack is that everything is camouflage green - including the fucking spoon! I can imagine the enemy creeping up during meal time, "My god, these people are insane, why are moving their arms up and down like that? They're not even holding anything!" They've gotten so into the whole camouflage thing that even the tea bags are green! Incidentally, my army tea bag fell apart when I tried to make my army tea, what a rip. Rating: camouflamazing!

	Vegemite Vegemite, no matter where you go, is vegemite. This is the one Australian product that is unfuckupable in any way. The army had to at least have shot though, so they put it in a tube. A TUBE! Not only is it in a tube, but they don't give you army toast so you basically have to eat it as-is. Ask anyone, that's just ewww. You can spread it on your crispbread crackers of course, but then what do you eat with your processed cheddar cheese? See? It's a never ending logic loop. The information sheet helpfully suggests that "vegetable extract can add flavour to noodles". Good idea, but I see NO NOODLES HERE information sheet! Rating: vegetable crapstract.

	Juicy Fruit By the time I got to the Juicy Fruit I had learned an important lesson: the few things the army hadn't touched with were normally edible. This mini pack of gum is produced totally out of the armies hands, they have to do nothing but pack it in the bag with the rest of the stuff. They STILL managed to fuck it up! You might be wondering how they could fuck up a pack of gum. Well, I haven't mentioned the uniform smell and aftertastes these foods produce. I can't even begin to describe it, but each product has the same chemical smell and aftertaste. Errrr... I guess I can say it tastes like how hospital disinfectant smells... if you get me. Anyway, this gum was full of aftertaste. It was so gross I had to wash down the flavour with some beverage base powder. Rating: I think it's meant as a sterile wound dressing.

	Jam Sandwich I left this one till last because it's sooooooo cute and funny. It's a pack of three jam filled biscuits like the ones you get at supermarkets. Surprisingly tasty things too, but what got me is the CUTE LITTLE JAM ARMY HEARTS! "Grrrrrrr we're big, tough and MEAN in the army! Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh... care for a jam heart sargent!?" Rating: Australian Care Bear Force.

Fumble-fingers strikes again: platic = plastic.

The origin of the "C"-ration goes back to World War 2. The US Army developed a whole line of rations for the troops. The "C"-ration became the standard field ration late in WW2 and continued past the end of the Vietnam War. During this time, the contents of the boxed, canned foods and accessories changed. However, the stuff did last a long time, and it was used for emergency food by Civil Defense during the height of the Cold War -- late 1940's to mid-1960's.

The "C"-ration was a food package that came in card board boxes, 12 to a case, with food in cans; a package of condiments, plastic spoon, toilet paper; and other assorted goodies. Each case had at least one or more folding steel can openers called -- for some mysterious reason -- a P-38. The can opener was retained by the individual soldier and usually attached to his dog tag chain so he could open his meal cans.

Some of the "C"-rats were really quite good, such as the spaghetti and meat balls (best cold) or the beans and weenies (hot) or beef in spiced sauce (either way). Some of the most horrible concoctions were the ham and lima beans, chopped; hamburger patties (three hockey pucks in a can topped by solidified grease -- manufacturer stopped in 1958), and the roast beef and potatoes (fatty roast beef with rock-hard potatoes and a 1-1/2 inch slab of grease). Most of the beef and potatoes cans wound-up clipped to the sides of M60 machine guns to help them draw the belt during firing. We gave some to the local Vietnamese and, after they recognized the can, they threw them back at us.

Some of the more edible stuff (other than the main meal) were the cocoa beverage powder, crackers and cheeze spread, and the pound cake. Other things labeled as edible but were ghastly -- the instant coffee packets and non-dairy creamer that clumped; the date pudding roll; and the tropical chocolate bar (this thing was so preserved that a K-bar knife could not cut it or a hand-held blowtorch melt it). Until almost the end of production -- that is, before the anti-smoking Nazis got them thrown out -- "C"-rations also contained a package of four cigarettes and a book of matches. Most of the cigarettes were pretty dried out by the time they came out of the foil bags, but no one cared much about that in the combat zone.

As for the Long Range Patrol Ration -- aka "LURP" -- there were eight different kinds of meal, three of each, in a case of 24. These rations were expensive and hard to get for some units. They also had some drawbacks: namely that the food was freeze-dried and required at least a canteen cup of water (boiling preferred) to re-hydrate the stuff. Of the eight meals, seven were not bad at all, and one was ghastly -- pork and scalloped potatoes. The P&SP looked like someone had puked in the bag before it was freeze dried. When re-constituted with water, the stuff was not improved. We actually found two guys that liked the stuff. They had their pile in the corner of our hut that had a small mountain of P&SP bags.

We developed a very quick and easy way to boil water -- take a 2x2x1-inch chunk of C-4 plastic explosive, put in a metal container, and put a can of watter on top after lighting the edge of the C-4 with a match. The C-4 burned with an almost invisible flame -- like Sterno -- and would heat the water to boiling in about 2 minutes. Care was taken to remove the very hot can and to pour-off the boiling water to make cocoa, coffee, or re-constitute a meal. The C-4 burned completely with no residue. However, if it was burning and you tried to stomp it out, it would detonate, and you'd lose a foot [bummer]. The technicque for reconstituting the meal was to pour in a boiling canteen cup of water, roll-over the edges of the bag while allowing the air to escape, flip the sealed bag upside down, and let it cook for about 10 minutes. The hot meal that resulted was quite good. The only drawback to a freeze-dried diet was that after 14 days of the stuff, you were so constipated you'd probably need a C-4 enema to get you going again.

Fumbles strikes again: watter = water.

I have a stomach cramp just reading that.....I havn't eaten a Rat Pack in years now......and hope never to HAVE TO again...!!!

To be fair to the MRE's, the Army has been "trying" to improve them since their introduction. One of the best things that they did was to include a small bottle of Tobasco Sauce. This zippy little wonder will spice up just about everything -- it is made from red peppers by Cajuns from the backwaters of Louisiana. [At least somebody finally asked the users what they used to make their rations more edible. The old soldiers told the research and development boys, we always take a bottle of Tobasco Sauce with us to spice up the rations -- and the Tobasco Co. even published a cook book for C-rations and Tobasco Sauce!]

However, the politically correct crowd got hold of the lowly MRE and devised a sort of "universal" MRE to be handed out for disaster relief and other such things. These rations have been culled of any foods that might "offend" the diet sensibilities of foreign nationals: no pork or beef products but chicken or fish is OK, veggies are OK and so is rice. [Being a rather rational sort, I always thought that if I had the choice of eating something frowned upon by my religious or ethnic beliefs or starving to death, that I could eat the former and I would still be alive to seek absolution later. However, starving in the presence of food was rather silly.]

Anyhow, the result is the most bland, tasteless, gunk that you can imagine and they don't give you any Tobasco Sauce to spice it up. Heaven help you if you happen to get some of this stuff by accident. If you do, you will consider regular MRE's to be a gourmet delight.

Oh, yes, the nasty, evil 4-pack of dried out cigarettes are gone, too. After all smoking is hazardous to your health, don't ya know? [I have always wondered which was more hazardous: smoking or combat, but the pinheads that made this decision obviously had never seen or heard of the latter.]

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