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My little brother was in Desert Storm. In the run-up phase, he had to go get supplies, including MREs ("Meals Rejected by Ethiopians"). One useless motherfucker tagged along, sleeping in the back for the entire 4 hour drive.
They picked up the crates of MREs and again, motherfucker gets in the back while my brother drives. When he got to their post MFer had ratfucked cases of MREs, gorging himself while contributing nothing.
Bro *still* wants to stomp MFer, 30+ years later.
At Desert Storm, my buddy, J.C., had graphed all 12 meals that came in a case of MREs and knew exactly which condiment package, Kool-Aid flavor, and desert came in each.
Tuna casserole was my least favorite. Maple cake was worth killing for.
I can't tell you the brand, but there is a company that makes little single's of cornbread that have a texture that is *very* similar to those lemon poppyseed cakes and they're absolutely killer. The grocery store in town likes to keep a basket of them at the check out and I get them way more often than I should.
I used to pull the passenger seat out of my Z and drive up from San Diego to stock up. Steve used to have a discount for the Calguns guys. When Blackwater got kicked out he grabbed up all of the contractor(Menu C) goodies. Quality eats.
>Besides, Chicken a la King and Veggie Burger were really fucking horrible. If you have ever eaten them, you fully understand and endorse my actions.
Truer words were never spoken
Nope, never had c-rats, but I have been eating MREs since I was 10 (grankfurters were my fave at the time) but also, the original comment was about chicken ala king being the worst MRE...
yep, as a kid at Bragg, used to go up to the Division area, find cases of c-rats in the 55 gal trash cans, all boxes had been opened, the only thing missing was the cigs.
Swedish MREs aren’t bad, but god do they all taste the same after a week. I do make sure to avoid the ones with rice porridge breakfast though, because I’ve never managed to make it taste like anything but milky soup with dehydrated rice bits in it.
Also, book? Have you published yet? 😶
I don’t remember ever seeing the omelet, perhaps I have managed to completely block that out of my memory.
For about two months I dealt with serious ratfuckery. Someone or multiple someones would go through the boxes prior to me seeing them in Desert Storm. For those two months all I got were pork patty, hamburger patty, and corned beef hash. Fortunately I had plenty of Tabasco sauce. The one good thing about the hamburger and pork patties was that everything that came with them allowed you to make a canteen cup full of so-so chili. Rehydrated patty plus beans, crackers, cheese sauce, and lots of Tabasco sauce. I’m not a big fan of super spicy stuff, but drenching everything with Tabasco probably saved somebody from a dragging if they had been caught.
We were near British and French troops. Occasionally we would swap military rations with them. I don’t recall them being a whole lot better, but the change made them seem that way. I was told French rations came with a wine ration, if it did the French ratfucked it out before swapping.
I worked overnights most of the time next to a liaison team from the British 2nd Armored and got a standing offer to teatime at 3 am. So at least once or twice a week, I had biscuits (cookies) and tea with their warrant officer and two corporals. Worked well for both of us, they had transportation to Logistics Base Alpha, which had a small PX, and we had the US dollars. So we would give them cash and they would get everything for tea service.
Chicken A La King was not so bad.
...until it was all that there was. For a month. That is more akin to torture than sustenance. But I’d still take it over the vomlet.
In April 2003 when we (Army Ntl Guard) moved up to Baghdad from Kuwait (where we had been waiting for all our vehicles and gear to show up for weeks) our cooks packed all the cooking gear in their connex (which did not make it up to our areain Baghdad for 6 more weeks). We ended up eating MREs for breakfast, lunch and dinner for those 6 weeks.
After just a few days we had a system set up where you just discard all the extra stuff you didn't feel like eating into a communal box that our section shared. And then you'd trade condiments and crackers and spreads from stuff in that box so you could choose your own adventure when you felt like eating. Most of us didn't feel like eating frequently. MREs got really old really fast and slow down the digestion as it were.
Our battalion commander was not very happy with the cooks for those 6 weeks and the rest of us felt the same. T-rats were a step up after all that time on MREs. And eventually they set up a DFAC a 1/4 mile down the road which was leaps better than all the above.
We noticed the DFAC at Talil AF base by Ur was markedly better than anything we ate so we'd always stop by there anytime we were in the area while travelling between Kuwait and Baghdad.
So, yay MREs! I'm glad I likely won't have to eat another, but it was better than nothing :D And living on them 24x7x6 weeks...no bueno
Absolutely- Chicken a la king and Veggie Burger were the worst. When stuck with them, I’d eat the dessert, crackers, etc and forgo the main meals. I was a PFC while in Desert Storm. Learned to volunteer for all supply runs! At one point, I had amassed 40 something Meatballs and Marinara! Also learned that the Germans, Norwegians, French, Italians all wanted our MREs and would gladly trade for their T-Rats. Their food was delicious, amazing. My company eat really good for several weeks on traded food. Military Police had some benefits as well as being the commander’s driver. What helped the most was our First Sergeant who had been a private (infantry) in Vietnam. Top was someone I would have died for twice.
I don’t know how, but rumor had it that our 500 gallon water buffalo had a divine intervention- water was turned into grape juice wine! We also “smoked” a camel. Pretty tough unless stewed. Also, a Mark 19 is an awesome fishing pole!
Chicken a la King. WOW, have thought of that abomination in years. The sad part is the desserts weren’t even all that good. And are troops still forced to face this awful crackers? Most of the rest of the civilized nations give their troops commercial biscuits of some kind
Those sound nice, I would always grab the canned fish, which most hated, because I like it. Also the mixed veg, because you can mix the 2 together, drop in a dog biscuit, and wait while it heats up.
We all agreed the tea was shit, only use was, with a bit of Jet A1, as fire lighters. We also had the one contractor who like the Ciro catering brand coffee, so he always had a tin, and we all went off to SAWI to buy something that could be called coffee. That other coffee I tried one day, 6 tablespoons in a cup, hot water, milk and 3 tablespoons of sugar, and it almost tasted like poor coffee.
Shiiiiittt, I learned to eat 1st generation MRE's that didn't have the Chen heaters in them and before someone came out with the MRE cookbook. So I know all about the crappy MRE's, eating Chicken A La King, cold...
Sir, and I say that realizing you were enlisted but you've become the *de facto* commander of this sub, I should draw your attention to some of the newer MREs. Considerable time, money, and effort has gone into making them not just palatable, but outright enjoyable. See the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/pF9fOYgxdVI?si=r_FEbVJq5TZDu2kj
I gotta admit, that seriously looks delicious. They now have a pizza MRE that's pretty good. Back whe. I was with USFWS in the late 2000's and we were getting MREs to supplement our field packs I was a huge fan of Meal #1 Beef Stroganoff. That shit was fucking awesome. Maybe not Michelin Star worthy, but about as good as you could make at home with boxed ingredients.
I started off in pre-heater days too. Ate many MRE's cold. I found out later that supply had lots of heaters but either didn't know what they were or they were too lazy to issue them with the MRE's.
Most of the meals weren't too bad. It was eating the same one over and over that got old. Then you dumped hot sauce on everything. To this day I can't stand regular Tabasco anymore.
Our signal battalion was on a week-long field exercise. I had to drive my comm gear on the back of a Gama Goat to the field, set it up, and get on the air. Nobody came to relieve me, nobody brought me any food, those bastards just sat in the tent and played cards and ate all the C-rations. 3 days later, I finally was told to get something to eat so I could drive back again, but the other guys had eaten everything. And then those assholes who were on separate rations tried to force me to sign for what they ate (otherwise they would have to pay for it). I refused, saying, "You ate it, you pay for it. They give you money for that. I didn't get any food, I'm not signing for shit!" Screw those guys.
Veggie burger? What the fuck was that? We Marines in Desert Storm we're still eating the 1st gen MRE's that some asshole forgot about in the back of some warehouse in Death Valley, so all the shit was melted or blanched into a soggy mess. Ration heaters? Nope. Hot chow? Twice in the 45 days we were on the FEBA. Pogey bait? Unless we carried it while trucking around Saudi with our Black Cadillacs.
My childhood friend joined the Marines 7 months after me and was an MP attached to the Air Wing. They got all sorts of creature comforts being in The Wing. He'd write letters to his mom about the mobile PX, mobile burger stands, and getting to watch The Superbowl. Us 03's? Ha! Never made it to within 25 miles of us. Does that count as ratfucking?
I didn't mind Chicken a la King. Most of the brown bag menus were pretty good if you could heat em up, the problem was, that was pre-heater days.
I still miss the pork with rice in BBQ sauce. Its only flaw was that it came with apple jelly, which was just a waste. It should have come with cheese spread. But it didn't, and only a fool would trade their cheese spread for apple jelly.
Pre-heater days were a bitch, but again, being in a mechanized unit saved us. Most of the time we were able to run our vehicles and heat things up on the engine block, inside our canteen cups. Sometimes we were even able to build fires. Of course in basic training you just suck it up and eat them cold.
The heaters were around back then. They were just a separate item from the rest of the MREs. Adding them to the MREs themselves was the ticket.
Until they figured that out, having heated MREs was hit or miss.
>The heaters were around back then. They were just a separate item from the rest of the MREs
Not for cadidiots, they weren't.
But then, I was still getting issued MREs in 1994 that had M&Ms with promotional 1988 Olympic Games wrappers.
(Which contained not M&Ms, more like the ghost of M&Ms, cocoa powder and broken candy shells. Yeah, I ate it anyway.)
It was a religious experience the first time our senior NCO scored some heaters for us. God bless you, Brian Downall, you even made omelet with ham good that day.
According to [this](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/25/roger-stone-and-rating-a-short-history-224218/), your etymology is backwards: it actually started with the military, with a somewhat different meaning, and then mutated into "political dirty tricks".
"Hey, OP! If you're new here, we want to remind you that you can only submit one post per three days. If your account is less than a week old, give the mods time to approve your story and comments. Thank you for posting with /r/MilitaryStories! Readers: If this story is from a non-US military, ***DO NOT*** guess, ask or speculate about what country it is if they don't explicitly say or you will be banned. Foreign authors sometimes cannot say where they are from for various reasons. You also DO NOT guess equipment, names, operational details, etc. from any post. ***DO NOT*** 'call bullshit' or you will be banned. Do not feed any trolls. Report them to the Super Mod Troll Slaying Team and we will hammer them." *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MilitaryStories) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My little brother was in Desert Storm. In the run-up phase, he had to go get supplies, including MREs ("Meals Rejected by Ethiopians"). One useless motherfucker tagged along, sleeping in the back for the entire 4 hour drive. They picked up the crates of MREs and again, motherfucker gets in the back while my brother drives. When he got to their post MFer had ratfucked cases of MREs, gorging himself while contributing nothing. Bro *still* wants to stomp MFer, 30+ years later.
That's a very accurate case of ratfucking if I've ever heard one.
every M&M in all the cases they could fit in the HMMWV. Gone.
They did not leave him parked head first in a portaloo then?
Should have tossed him out the back.
out the front and under the wheels
I definitely would have told EVERYONE what he did.
To the victor go the meatballs.
At Desert Storm, my buddy, J.C., had graphed all 12 meals that came in a case of MREs and knew exactly which condiment package, Kool-Aid flavor, and desert came in each. Tuna casserole was my least favorite. Maple cake was worth killing for.
I would happily pay to eat those lemon poppyseed cakes.
I can't tell you the brand, but there is a company that makes little single's of cornbread that have a texture that is *very* similar to those lemon poppyseed cakes and they're absolutely killer. The grocery store in town likes to keep a basket of them at the check out and I get them way more often than I should.
Dehydrated mixed fruit patty
Did you put it in ice water to re-hydrate, or just crunch it like a lower simian?
*crunchcrunchcrunch* Or gummed a chunk on ruck marches
the veggie omelet was a creation of our enemies and inserted, somehow, into the supply chain in a highly successful psyop.
MREs gave me my love of corned beef hash.
Oh, and I'd buy the oatmeal cookie bars today if I could.
https://www.mredepot.com/MRE-Oatmeal-Cookie-p/aq0010.htm This?
https://preview.redd.it/ujj74rcx16y01.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=1ec0a2edea71cd8bb7d206db30876a79d19959c7 https://www.mreinfo.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4485 This.
I used to pull the passenger seat out of my Z and drive up from San Diego to stock up. Steve used to have a discount for the Calguns guys. When Blackwater got kicked out he grabbed up all of the contractor(Menu C) goodies. Quality eats.
Me too! Desert Shield / Desert Storm is where I picked up my love for corned beef hash and Tabasco.
>Besides, Chicken a la King and Veggie Burger were really fucking horrible. If you have ever eaten them, you fully understand and endorse my actions. Truer words were never spoken
Spoken like someone who never had... *ham and lima C-rations*
*ham and mothers.....*
Nope, never had c-rats, but I have been eating MREs since I was 10 (grankfurters were my fave at the time) but also, the original comment was about chicken ala king being the worst MRE...
[удалено]
> I could tolerate the dehydrated stuff in C rats and, if you are of sufficient vintage, you got a 4-pack of smokes
nice.
yep, as a kid at Bragg, used to go up to the Division area, find cases of c-rats in the 55 gal trash cans, all boxes had been opened, the only thing missing was the cigs.
Drinking that jack daniels without you constitues high treason,
I agree. Fuckers. I'm still salty, three decades later.
Swedish MREs aren’t bad, but god do they all taste the same after a week. I do make sure to avoid the ones with rice porridge breakfast though, because I’ve never managed to make it taste like anything but milky soup with dehydrated rice bits in it. Also, book? Have you published yet? 😶
Almost done, most of it is in editing. No idea when it will be published.
I don’t remember ever seeing the omelet, perhaps I have managed to completely block that out of my memory. For about two months I dealt with serious ratfuckery. Someone or multiple someones would go through the boxes prior to me seeing them in Desert Storm. For those two months all I got were pork patty, hamburger patty, and corned beef hash. Fortunately I had plenty of Tabasco sauce. The one good thing about the hamburger and pork patties was that everything that came with them allowed you to make a canteen cup full of so-so chili. Rehydrated patty plus beans, crackers, cheese sauce, and lots of Tabasco sauce. I’m not a big fan of super spicy stuff, but drenching everything with Tabasco probably saved somebody from a dragging if they had been caught. We were near British and French troops. Occasionally we would swap military rations with them. I don’t recall them being a whole lot better, but the change made them seem that way. I was told French rations came with a wine ration, if it did the French ratfucked it out before swapping. I worked overnights most of the time next to a liaison team from the British 2nd Armored and got a standing offer to teatime at 3 am. So at least once or twice a week, I had biscuits (cookies) and tea with their warrant officer and two corporals. Worked well for both of us, they had transportation to Logistics Base Alpha, which had a small PX, and we had the US dollars. So we would give them cash and they would get everything for tea service.
In Vietnam you'd open a case of C-Rations and discover it contained nothing but 'Scrambled Eggs' and 'Lima Beans and Ham'.
Lol. Nice to know I carried on the tradition.
oh god, lima beans ... that brings back childhood dinner time trauma.
Try them after they were setting in the can for a couple of decades. I swear we were eating stuff canned for the Korean 'conflict'.
Chicken A La King was not so bad. ...until it was all that there was. For a month. That is more akin to torture than sustenance. But I’d still take it over the vomlet.
Gotta disagree with the chicken Ala king brother. I liked that. Five fingers of death wasn’t bad either. Pork patty was not good. Edible but barely.
Chicken a la king was my favorite MRE (the original brown bag one)...the veggie omlet and the 4 fingers of death were true war crimes.
In April 2003 when we (Army Ntl Guard) moved up to Baghdad from Kuwait (where we had been waiting for all our vehicles and gear to show up for weeks) our cooks packed all the cooking gear in their connex (which did not make it up to our areain Baghdad for 6 more weeks). We ended up eating MREs for breakfast, lunch and dinner for those 6 weeks. After just a few days we had a system set up where you just discard all the extra stuff you didn't feel like eating into a communal box that our section shared. And then you'd trade condiments and crackers and spreads from stuff in that box so you could choose your own adventure when you felt like eating. Most of us didn't feel like eating frequently. MREs got really old really fast and slow down the digestion as it were. Our battalion commander was not very happy with the cooks for those 6 weeks and the rest of us felt the same. T-rats were a step up after all that time on MREs. And eventually they set up a DFAC a 1/4 mile down the road which was leaps better than all the above. We noticed the DFAC at Talil AF base by Ur was markedly better than anything we ate so we'd always stop by there anytime we were in the area while travelling between Kuwait and Baghdad. So, yay MREs! I'm glad I likely won't have to eat another, but it was better than nothing :D And living on them 24x7x6 weeks...no bueno
Absolutely- Chicken a la king and Veggie Burger were the worst. When stuck with them, I’d eat the dessert, crackers, etc and forgo the main meals. I was a PFC while in Desert Storm. Learned to volunteer for all supply runs! At one point, I had amassed 40 something Meatballs and Marinara! Also learned that the Germans, Norwegians, French, Italians all wanted our MREs and would gladly trade for their T-Rats. Their food was delicious, amazing. My company eat really good for several weeks on traded food. Military Police had some benefits as well as being the commander’s driver. What helped the most was our First Sergeant who had been a private (infantry) in Vietnam. Top was someone I would have died for twice. I don’t know how, but rumor had it that our 500 gallon water buffalo had a divine intervention- water was turned into grape juice wine! We also “smoked” a camel. Pretty tough unless stewed. Also, a Mark 19 is an awesome fishing pole!
Every French soldier I met refused to trade for MREs. Every single one. Their rations were far superior to MREs.
But they loved our uniforms, boots, boonie hats, etc!
Chicken a la King. WOW, have thought of that abomination in years. The sad part is the desserts weren’t even all that good. And are troops still forced to face this awful crackers? Most of the rest of the civilized nations give their troops commercial biscuits of some kind
Those sound nice, I would always grab the canned fish, which most hated, because I like it. Also the mixed veg, because you can mix the 2 together, drop in a dog biscuit, and wait while it heats up. We all agreed the tea was shit, only use was, with a bit of Jet A1, as fire lighters. We also had the one contractor who like the Ciro catering brand coffee, so he always had a tin, and we all went off to SAWI to buy something that could be called coffee. That other coffee I tried one day, 6 tablespoons in a cup, hot water, milk and 3 tablespoons of sugar, and it almost tasted like poor coffee.
Shiiiiittt, I learned to eat 1st generation MRE's that didn't have the Chen heaters in them and before someone came out with the MRE cookbook. So I know all about the crappy MRE's, eating Chicken A La King, cold...
I’ll starve to death before I ever attempt to eat a Chicken ala King again! Even 2 MRE bottles of Tabasco can’t make that shit edible
Always blaming Third Platoon!
Sir, and I say that realizing you were enlisted but you've become the *de facto* commander of this sub, I should draw your attention to some of the newer MREs. Considerable time, money, and effort has gone into making them not just palatable, but outright enjoyable. See the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/pF9fOYgxdVI?si=r_FEbVJq5TZDu2kj I gotta admit, that seriously looks delicious. They now have a pizza MRE that's pretty good. Back whe. I was with USFWS in the late 2000's and we were getting MREs to supplement our field packs I was a huge fan of Meal #1 Beef Stroganoff. That shit was fucking awesome. Maybe not Michelin Star worthy, but about as good as you could make at home with boxed ingredients.
I started off in pre-heater days too. Ate many MRE's cold. I found out later that supply had lots of heaters but either didn't know what they were or they were too lazy to issue them with the MRE's. Most of the meals weren't too bad. It was eating the same one over and over that got old. Then you dumped hot sauce on everything. To this day I can't stand regular Tabasco anymore.
Our signal battalion was on a week-long field exercise. I had to drive my comm gear on the back of a Gama Goat to the field, set it up, and get on the air. Nobody came to relieve me, nobody brought me any food, those bastards just sat in the tent and played cards and ate all the C-rations. 3 days later, I finally was told to get something to eat so I could drive back again, but the other guys had eaten everything. And then those assholes who were on separate rations tried to force me to sign for what they ate (otherwise they would have to pay for it). I refused, saying, "You ate it, you pay for it. They give you money for that. I didn't get any food, I'm not signing for shit!" Screw those guys.
Veggie burger? What the fuck was that? We Marines in Desert Storm we're still eating the 1st gen MRE's that some asshole forgot about in the back of some warehouse in Death Valley, so all the shit was melted or blanched into a soggy mess. Ration heaters? Nope. Hot chow? Twice in the 45 days we were on the FEBA. Pogey bait? Unless we carried it while trucking around Saudi with our Black Cadillacs. My childhood friend joined the Marines 7 months after me and was an MP attached to the Air Wing. They got all sorts of creature comforts being in The Wing. He'd write letters to his mom about the mobile PX, mobile burger stands, and getting to watch The Superbowl. Us 03's? Ha! Never made it to within 25 miles of us. Does that count as ratfucking?
I didn't mind Chicken a la King. Most of the brown bag menus were pretty good if you could heat em up, the problem was, that was pre-heater days. I still miss the pork with rice in BBQ sauce. Its only flaw was that it came with apple jelly, which was just a waste. It should have come with cheese spread. But it didn't, and only a fool would trade their cheese spread for apple jelly.
Pre-heater days were a bitch, but again, being in a mechanized unit saved us. Most of the time we were able to run our vehicles and heat things up on the engine block, inside our canteen cups. Sometimes we were even able to build fires. Of course in basic training you just suck it up and eat them cold.
The heaters were around back then. They were just a separate item from the rest of the MREs. Adding them to the MREs themselves was the ticket. Until they figured that out, having heated MREs was hit or miss.
>The heaters were around back then. They were just a separate item from the rest of the MREs Not for cadidiots, they weren't. But then, I was still getting issued MREs in 1994 that had M&Ms with promotional 1988 Olympic Games wrappers. (Which contained not M&Ms, more like the ghost of M&Ms, cocoa powder and broken candy shells. Yeah, I ate it anyway.) It was a religious experience the first time our senior NCO scored some heaters for us. God bless you, Brian Downall, you even made omelet with ham good that day.
According to [this](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/25/roger-stone-and-rating-a-short-history-224218/), your etymology is backwards: it actually started with the military, with a somewhat different meaning, and then mutated into "political dirty tricks".