I found some OLD military canned food...

[PatMarlin]

I was hiking around my property yesterday, and found 2 cans about the size of a tuna can, but half as tall- Military green, and old looking.

One was "Cheese Spread" hickory flavored, still in pretty good shape and unopened. The other was unopened but rusted pretty bad, and couldn't make out what it is.

This is remote mountain country, and these were obvioulsy left over from many years past deer hunt. I've never seen these, and would they be from WW2?

[wills]

See how that tastes, and report back!

[NVcurmudgeon]

Pat, take them to the next gun show you attend. Some mad military collector will probably pay a bundle for them!

[trooperdan]

The hickory flaver cheese was/is a favorite of mine.. can in the C rations of the late '70's at least, maybe the early '80's.. Mighty good stuff spread on some GI crackers! They used to come in a can so they never got busted up like the MRE's do.

[PatMarlin]

See how that tastes, and report back!

Dang cheddar smell is strong. Smells through the can.


Cracked one open Wills and it has bout the same aroma and flavor of 4895 extruded. Not to bad.. :holysheep :mrgreen:

[SharpsShooter]

Back in 1984. The government gave a Nuclear Fall Out shelter to the Radio station where I was Assistant Chief Engineer. The shelter was located beside our AM transmitter building and we figured it would make a super building to house our MW1A and BC1T transmitters. The Chief and I spent several days cleaning it out. We removed over 50 cases of C-Rats, including the cheese you mention and crackers in the tin containers. Sadly, all this stuff went to the dump. Some of the tins had burst, I assume from freezing, but most were unharmed. Had I known at the time this stuff would have any collector value, it would have gone home with me. Interesting building though, it had a hand driven air pump snorkel with a good supply of filters and plenty of sod piled on the lead sheet roof. After all our work, the station changed hands and our budget for the project was scrapped. I'm still in touch with the Chief and he tells me the shelter is falling down slowly, so when it comes down, I have first shot at the lead roof sheeting. Not a total waste after all.

[13Echo]

Ahh yes, Cheese Spread. Brings back fond memories of C rats. Never had the hickory flavor variety. We made GI Pizza with the stuff - Spread the cheese on a C ration cracker, cut up some meat balls or viennas if you had them, put it back in the can and put it all in the C ration box and set it on fire. If you were lucky you had one of the tiny bottles of Tabasco to add some flavor. Tasted pretty good, or at least it seemed to after long enough in the field. OK, so it was pretty bad, but better than Ham & Limas.

Jerry Liles

[trooperdan]

When I was a young stud and thought nothing of driving non-stop across the country I lived on C-rats and Pepsi! I'd get a case of "C's", a 1.00 cheap foam cooler and a case of pepsi. When it was near time to eat, I'd pull over and put a can of meat on the intake manifold of my '66 Pontiac Tempest overhead cam six cylinder, drive 15 minutes and pull over for a hot meal.

I rescued a sad looking hippy fellow off the side of the road near Barstow CA once and took him the rest of the way into San Francisco. He looked too bad for anyone else to stop for him but I took him in and fed him Ham n lima's and ham and eggs til we made it to the bay... In return, he offered to give me a tour around town. We stopped at one light and right outside my windows was a beautiful tall platinium blond babe! She was dressed in a sexy gown, beautiful body, just a knock-out! She smiled at me and I almost passed out.. just then the hippy was elbowing me saying "Cool it, that's a guy"! Hick in the big city, that was me. :)

Last piece of advice the hippy told me was not to offer to light any more cigiretts for ladies of the evening using my C ration matches! Turns out he was right in that respect as well but that is another story!

[grumble]

Lots of C-rat stories!

When I was a kid in boy Scouts, they used to give them to us on our 2-week campouts. Probably more to get rid of them than anything. <GGG> Anyway, most of you know they aren't exactly fine cusine.

My dad used to tell the story about how wonderful they tasted after he got out of Burma, where they'd get, weather permitting, biweekly drops of K-rations (kind of a candy bar filled with what was supposed to be nutritious stuff but that tasted horrible). His group subsisted on those K-rats for almost a year plus whatever they could forage from the locals or overrun Japanese caches. He said that when they got out of Burma and to a real US base, they thought the C-rats were fit for royal dining. He hated Spam until he died, though. <G>

[13Echo]

Grumble,
Was your dad one of Merrill's Marauders? One of the truly great combat units of all time.

Jerry Liles

[Bullshop]

Grumble,
Was your dad one of Merrill's Marauders? One of the truly great combat units of all time.

Jerry Liles
13echo
Ever heard of Castners cut throats. A few real woodsman living out on thier own and giving the jap's what for when they invaded Alaska.
BIC/BS

[grumble]

Grumble,
Was your dad one of Merrill's Marauders? One of the truly great combat units of all time.

Jerry Liles

Yep, Jerry, he was with Merrill. A bunch of tough-as-nails troops going on foot to meet the Japs in the middle of a jungle.

To me, one of the most interesting things about that Burma campaign is that when it was time to get all those troops out of the jungle, they just got them in formation and told them to get home any way they could. Groups of Special Service (now called Special Forces) in twos, fives and twenties walked out on their own, foraging as they could, stealing as much as possible from the Brits, and making friends with antipathetic locals to get anywhere they could catch a ride. Dad was one of the luckier ones, he and a few other guys managed to catch a ride on a US Air Corps aircraft from Delhi, India to Cairo, Egypt, which was a port of call to England, and thus home. The trip from Burma to England only took him three months. Some guys actually had to join camel caravans to get to Allied territory.

Not quite the same Army as we have today, huh?

[Char-Gar]

I have a friend named Ray Thorpe who was with Merrill the whole time. One of the few still fit to fight when it was over, although he weighed less than 100 lbs. Boy can he tell some stories...

[felix]

Grumble, about Burma. My grandfather's brother's son was a wiskey runner in southeast missouri during the 30's. Not enough excitement, so he finally got into the air corps to drive the DC3s over the hump. He would load those things to the hilt so they would barely take off. As he approached the mountains, he figured how much to kick off to just gain enough altitude. As I was told, he would never fly if he was sober so he would have enough courage to scrape the belly of the plane. After the Burma war was over, he flew for Trans Texas, a cargo outfit supplying the oil fields. Soon the DC3s were sold to Alaska Airlines for fish runs, and the Trans Texas airlines became a full jet service for passengers only. He flew those planes for a few years, and then quit. Not enough excitement. ... felix

[grumble]

And to think -- the net result of all that was to put Mao in power and Shang Ki Sheck on a little island. Leaders like Merrill and Stillwell could never have anticipated such an outcome.

[Scrounger]

And to think -- the net result of all that was to put Mao in power and Shang Ki Sheck on a little island. Leaders like Merrill and Stillwell could never have anticipated such an outcome.

Communism has certainly proven itself to be a brutal and unworkable form of government, so please don't take this as an endorsement of it. But histories I've read about during and after the war, Mao and the communists were ten times better allies than 'Peanut'. I also believe that the communist undergrounds in France and Yugoslavia were much more instrumental in defeating the Nazis than other groups. What a wonderful world this would be if we had only people and NO politics.

[felix]

What a wonderful world this would be if we had only people and NO politics..

Scrounger, you just defined Heaven! Politics is a result of the free will given to us, and the evil one being allowed to roam freely as well. The old addage of divide and conquer is what the evil one is doing to us by introducing false gods whenever appropriate. ... felix

[PatMarlin]

-And to think this was all started by a little can of cheese spread... :mrgreen:

[grumble]

"Politics is a result of the free will given to us, and the evil one being allowed to roam freely as well."

Religion too, eh, felix?

[felix]

Yep, all man made religions are cop outs from the real to the imaginary. ... felix

[grumble]

Yep, all man made religions are cop outs from the real to the imaginary. ... felix

"Man-made" religions? Isn't that redundant on its face?

[felix]

Yes it is, unless you have been singled out and know it. ... felix

[grumble]

OK, you win. <GGG>

[felix]

Jim, I surely hope so, along with the rest of us as individuals (and as a group of castaholics). ... felix

[charlie / sw mo]

happy birthday to al the Marines on the list---talking about c-rations takes me back to my first duty station in the corps. in the winter of 1953 i checked into the cold weather training center a few miles north of bridgeport ca. at that time pilots from our air wing went thru escape & evasion training for about a week and units from camp pendlelon ca. came up for 9 days of cold weather training. both groups got hot meals for two days while getting instruction on how to live in cold weather--then the pilots were turned loose to try to evade our agressor platoon. both groups started at about 7000 ft altitude and wound up at around 10000 ft--sometimes snow would be up to 15 ft deep--the grunts got snowshoes--the pilots made thier own. from the second day the grunts ate c-rations--the pilots had to kill whatever they could find or go hungry. i still remember eating c-rats with the date 1943 on them. sausage and hamberger patties that when it was opened the grease was green on top(once heated up they were ok). there were some of those c-rats that almost nobody would eat--lima beans was one and while i got fat on the hambrger and sausage, a lot of it got deep sixed. there was spots for trash to be taken but most of what would burn went into fires and a lot of the cans were shoved down into the snow. the whole area was federal forest land so in the spring after the snow melted the col. would march us up into the training areas--we would form a skirmish line of everybody below cpl--then the cpls and sgts--then the staff ncos and then the officers. everybody from cpl down had sandbags to pick up trash in --everybody else made sure nothing was missed. two pcs (3/4 ton trucks) came along behind to haul the trash in. one truck was just for unopened rations(depending how much snowfall we had iv seen them half full to full). all the rations we picked up were taken to our messhall where it was converted to whatever the mess sgts imagination could get away with. hambeger and sausage patties made some passable **** on the shingle (hamberger gravey on toast). nothing got wasted. seems iv got carried away and wrote a book.
charlie in sw mo

[Bret4207]

I loved C-rats, beef parts and poultry parts was best. Hated the Ham and eggs, not crazy about the spagehtti. Really loved those chocolate covered coconut things.

[C1PNR]

C-Rats! Man, does that bring back memories! Even some GOOD memories of field manuvers, good friends, etc!

Anyone remember K Rations? They came in the bigger cans, like # 10 size, I think they were designed as "Squad" size.

I was at NavComStaHono near Wahiawa, on Oahu. It's a Navy base and we were the Marine Guard Detachment. It was small enough that the one enlisted mess was run by a Chief Petty Officer.

Well, this was less than 20 years after the end of WW II and there was still a lot of "stuff" left over in the warehouses. Our mess was selected (only a CPO in charge, not an Officer:p ) as one to help "use up" some of those OLD K Rations.

One of the cooks was a Marine (Bread and Pastry) and he gave us the scoop. The Chief was instructed by "higher authority" to feed us at least one meal each week made completely, or almost so, from the old K Rations.

Man, the word would go out early in the day, whatever the meal, and we'd eat at the "Slop Chute" instead.:D

I know they sent a lot of those K Rations off to the Pigs, and other civilian beneficiaries.;)

Maybe some day I'll tell y'all the rest of the story about that mess hall! Great place to eat!:D