A Trucker's Tale – Good Food

Dec 18, 2024 - 8 months ago

When we were away from our camp, and not close to a location serving hot food, our standard culinary fare came from boxes containing various kinds of Combat, Individual Ration, more commonly referred to as C-rations.

A Trucker's Tale - Good Food — *Our hilarious cooks*

Each box contained one can of meat and vegetables, such as beans and franks, or spam and a vegetable, or—the absolute worst when cold—ham and eggs, although everyone called them H & MFs (ham and MFS.) Another can usually contained fruit. Other cans, or packages, could offer chocolate, crackers, cocoa powder, cigarettes, and a Folding Pocket Can Opener, which is better known as your P-38.

C-rations typically tasted awful, although their flavor could be made more palatable if they were heated. Most of the guys who drove trucks, or those who operated heavy machinery, learned that the very hot exhaust manifolds of motors proved to be excellent stoves for heating their meals. By puncturing a hole in a can with your P-38, you would then set the can on top of the manifold. Sometimes you might have to leave the motor running so the manifold would stay hot. At other times, the country was so hot that the engines stayed hot for a long time. In 15 to 20 minutes, you were eating a warm meal.

If we were at Camp Haines, we ate at our U.S Navy operated mess hall, or chow hall. Food was served all day from about 0430 to 2100, and there were no restrictions concerning who was served. If you were a soldier, you ate as much, and as often, as you liked.

Navy cooks have always had the reputation of serving the bests meals of any of the armed forces, and our cooks reinforced their legend. Each morning, I looked forward to breakfast because three or four cooks manned separate stoves, and each was surrounded by every imaginable breakfast fixing. You could ask for an omelet with any ingredient, pancakes, waffles, eggs fixed any way, steak and eggs, or simply, any breakfast you could dream-up.

I’m not sure why, but I suspected it was either supposed to be a morale boosting effort, or possibly some officers just wanted to fly around South Vietnam eating and tasting foods, but our chow hall was awarded the Best Chow Hall in I-Corps designation. Actually, this was a hell of an honor, as we were pitted against the much larger, and better-supplied, chow halls of Danang.

It was my job, and my privilege, to haul at least half of our food supplies from Danang. I had heard that our mess hall’s procurement officer—not sure, but he was probably a Master Chief—excelled at the Navy’s art of comshaw, the literal definition of which is “the other than legal means of procurement.” It may have been that he was just a damned-good barterer, but the foods he procured (secured by whatever means) allowed us to eat honest-to-God home cooked meals. We felt more at home eating in our mess hall than eating those damned H & MFs!

You can imagine, when this much food was available, especially the varied and numerous choices, it often happened that we weren’t able to eat everything we had piled on our plates. Thankfully, our uneaten or partially eaten meals did not go to waste. After we placed our trays at one of the kitchen windows, the crew removed the utensils, napkins, and other non-edible items, and the leftovers were scraped into washed-out 55-gallon steel drums.

Shortly after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, our closest Vietnamese village’s “food envoy” could be seen leaving our camp with one of the drums. He pulled his cart, which was mounted on an axle with two passenger car-sized tires, and he made this trip three times every single day.

Driving Highway 1 all the time, I was astounded the first time I saw what happened when he arrived at his hamlet with our leftovers. One person used a large ladle to fill the pots and pans the other village residents had brought. It didn’t seem to bother them that all the different meats, vegetables, breads, and desserts were mixed. (None of us could fathom having to choke-down that concoction, but then, I doubt that any of us have ever been that hungry.)

All U.S. soldiers were required to take malaria pills every week, and we had all been injected with countless inoculations before we had left the States. Even so, I am sure all of us would have become violently ill if we had eaten from these drums. The Vietnamese, however, ate each meal as though it had been freshly prepared. We never heard of them getting sick. Truthfully, it shouldn’t have surprised us. The fact that they drank from any water source should have given us the clue that their bodies could tolerate anything we gave them.

One thing I never did notice was overweight or obese Vietnamese people. Maybe that was their side-effect from eating from 55-gallon steel drums.

Two weeks before we left Vietnam for home, a dozen of us were sent 20 miles north of Camp Haines to finish a road project the previous battalion had not had time to finish. We were housed at an Army firebase, Landing Zone (LZ) Nancy, and when dinnertime rolled around on our first night, the only mess hall we found happened to be the Army officer’s mess. We filled our plates and enjoyed a warm meal. The Army officers glared at us, wondering why we were eating with them. When we left in search of a beer, we noticed the mess was well lit, because the electricity was being provided by one of our Seabee battalion’s generators, and our MCB-10 emblems, which were affixed to both sides, looked awfully good. This made us proud!

The next morning, we were not-so-politely ordered to stay out of the officer’s mess. We were told to eat C-rations, just like the Army’s enlisted men. We grudgingly ate our cold cans of ham and eggs and then we headed to the jobsite for the day.

After we suffered through more C-rations for dinner that evening, an Army officer stopped by our hut with an invitation for us to eat with them in their mess for the few days we would be there. That morning, we were told to get out. Now, we were invited back. What was going on? Then our master chief made us aware that he had hooked his Jeep to the generator during the day and hauled it to an off-site location. He said, as far as he was concerned, the Army must have misappropriated the generator, since it was clearly labeled as US Navy Seabee property. He informed us that he had rightfully reclaimed what surely belonged to us.

After we accepted the Army officer’s invitation to dine with them, our master chief towed the generator back to the mess hall, and then hooked all the wires back together. We enjoyed hot breakfasts and dinners for the remainder of our stay at the firebase just south of Quang Tri, and the officers realized that we weren’t such bad guys, even though we were just lowly enlisted men. It really is surprising how quickly folks can change their minds when you literally, “Turn their lights out!”

Ed Miller ([email protected]) has more than 40 years of management and ownership experience in the trucking industry. Today, he is a part-time tour bus driver, published author of “A Trucker’s Tale”, and regular contributor to Supply Post. He is a father of three and a grandfather of two, and lives with his wife in Rising Sun, Maryland.