I actually liked the spaghetti.
Couldn't eat the eggs, the ham & mothers was OK, if I discarded the beans. But the best was when four or five guys dumped their entrees into an ammo can to be heated over a fire. Add about half a bottle of Tobasco and that's good eating!

Being a 84 1/2 old WW2 vet,I've eating my share
of C ration's,when we got K ration's we were
eating a lot better.

Dick

This must be a old thread i`m 91 now.

Roger all on the Eggs and Ham ... blech.

I can't believe nobody mentioned the John Wayne Bar (Choclate with toffee chips) -- Yum! I was also a spaghetti fan, best heated by placing on top of a M151's engine while travelling to staff meetings.

In the 80's at the Yakima Firing Center we had a USMC Tank Platoon attached to our Army infantry company, and the Marines where still issued C's, while we had been eating MREs for some time. I was surprised to see my troops, and me, trading our MRE's for the C's we'd all previously badmouthed. I guess variety is the spice of life.

my favorite was ham and MF'S - traded pound cake for Pall Mall Red(no filter) - still smoked em when came home - naturaly all were opened with:

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Fair winds and following sea

i ate them n the 60s but I dont really remember if the were good or bad,,I guess if they were bad I would remember that,,,seems to me i did like the crackers

***edited***, was sooo young and hungry tired......ANYTHING tasted good

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Rimfires Makes me "Insane"

Will5A1, I also fondly remember the immersion heaters. I've seen the cooks throw a match into one and have it blow that section of "stove pipe" coming out the top 50 feet straight up in the air.

It was not an unusual sound to wake up to to hear them heaters "blowing up" all over an encampment area!

Damn, those were the days!

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G.P. Charlie

I served from 81-89 so I Had both the c rats and mre'e. C rat favorite chicken or turkey loaf with melted caraway cheese and for desert pound cake and babyheads (apricots).Mre favorite Ham slices and all the deserts sucked. The worst c rat was beef and shrapnel(beef and potatoes) one side beef- one side potatoes and loaded with grease , desert chocolate choke roll. MRE's beef and spiced sauce and desert , the dam gorilla cookies that were welded together with the wax paper stuck in the middle

Sir, C-rats were largely a thing of the past when I was in, but we still got them occasionally. I didn't pay attention to when they were made; based on the "previous war" model, we just assumed they were Vietnam vintage. They didn't come with cigarettes.

The tuna was good, as were the "beef and rocks," but the beanies and weenies I could have done without. I don't recall ever getting ham and mothers, thank goodness. The pound cake was excellent, the fruit cocktail outstanding--far superior to the dehydrated styrofoam version in the early MREs.

I still carry my John Wayne on my keyring. That thing was the original multi-tool.

Hope this helps, and Semper Fi.

Ron H.

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Wishin' don't make it so.

I went in 29 Jan, 1951. Had C & K rations left over from WW 2. Still carry on my key chain the P-38 can opener that came with my first box. It's Dated 1951 also. Don't know how mwny cans of beer it's opened. Gee Whiz, does that make it a collectors item? Only 58 years?Nawwww.

Gator I hate to tell you but you are wrong. The first generation of MRE's were mostly dehydrated.

Pork and beef patties that required water. I've also seen potato patties that required the same.

All of them were horrible and we screamed for A rations or give us back our old "C"'s.

Sir, not so. The first-generation MREs (which I ate a lot of) did have various dehydrated items, but the pork and beef patties were the only dehydrated main courses. The "styrofoam fruit things" and potato cake were dehydrated, as were various things in the accessory pack, but most main courses were fully hydrated: Beef, Ground, w/Spiced Sauce; Chicken a la King; Beef Stew; Ham and Chicken Loaf; Ham Slices; Tuna, etc. I forget now what the others were (there were 12 total), but they weren't dehydrated.

Hope this helps, and Semper Fi.

Ron H.

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Wishin' don't make it so.

I remember re-deploying to Ft. Campbell from Somalia in December 1985 and in my ruck when i emptied it out my wife found the dehdrated strawberies from the MRE.

She thought oh wow strawberries, she added water and took one spoonful and thre them out.

the chicklets and chuckles in the C rats were pretty good when I got them. I remember most of the time we never ate them heated.

I only had LRRPS a few times and I recall the chili con carni was hot. even dehydrated.

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Stan

I loved those impregnable, chocolate bricks and hardtack, 2 inch thick crackers! I had better teeth then, too.

My favorite was ham & eggs. Most people didn't like them, so I could most always swap for some.

Actualy none of the C-rats were bad, if you could heat them. Some could be kinda rough cold. (i.e. ham & lima beans, Spagetti & meat balls)

Generaly speaking however MRE's are better.

Does anyone know of anyplace to buy c rats? Used to be able to get then in surplus stores but not any more. I am not demented, I just want some for old times sake. Thanks

I agree with RonH. About '83 or '84 they were switching over. I've had to suffer both but MRE's sucked! I was stationed in OK at Ft.Sill at that time,I think sometimes they were trying to use the C's up but I could be wrong, they came up with some crazy reasons to serve us that stuf.

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Dum vivo cano

You could have put the "beef bar" into a sock and used it as a silent kill weapon.

To ChinaSeaSailor, You are talking about my two favs.. Many is the times I would have a lit Pall Mall in my mouth,a pound cake in my left and my weapon in my right. Also the P-38--What a lifesaver...I carried on on my keychain for years after I got back to the World. Miss that old boy.

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4th SQD 7th CAVALRY

I don't know if this counts but here goes. In 1963 I was 10 years old and my Dad was a company commander at Fort Benning GA. On night he brought home some C rations so my brothers and I could try them. I remember eating hamburger I think. I do remember it wasn't like any hamburger I'd ever had before...or since. It was a long time go but I still remember eating that out of the can. Funny the things you remember.

May be very difficult to find. Up until MREs were issued units had cases of Cs stored for deployments. Many were condemned and a few made it on to the surplus market.

I liked the fruit cake. I didn't even have to trade for it -- most of the other guys couldn't stand it.

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VIVERE MILITARE EST

I was drafted in '63 and was given an all expense paid vacation to SE Asia and am very familar with the C rations of WWII vintage.
I hated the corned beef hash, ham and MF'S, & John Wayne candy bars. The beanie weenies and the smokes were about the only thing I liked about the C rations


grizz

Viet Nam - 1969 - Infantry
I ate them EVERY day during my tour even when we were securing a Fire Support Base. I never had a favorite because I got tired of all of them - even with tabasco sauce, catsup or mustard. However, given a choice I tryed to latch on to beanie weanies/crackers & cheese with peaches and fruitcake for dessert. When my platoon would get resupplied, we would just open a case of C-rats and dump them all out and everyone picked what they liked best and then we would begin trading rats with one another.
We even traded them for Vietnamese sandwiches (bread with weavils in it and cucumbers) when patrolling thru villages. Memories!

USMC 66-70 RVN 67-68 and had a LOT of "C" Rats of the WWll variety. I would eat most any of them but, had a fav or two. The cigarettes were so dry they almost spontaneously combusted when opened but, I smoked them! Camels, Pall Malls, and the occasional Lucky Strike pack!

I have had a taste of the newer MRE's and I would rather have the old C rats. Where did I put that old P-38 anyway? We called them "John Waynes".

With every crate of C's came a "SP" pack. The Supplimental Pack held exta cigs, candy, even paperback books. My Fav was Hershey's Tropical Choclate. It had a high parafin content, and you could chew it for hours and hours. I could have all I wanted, 'cause no-one else wanted it. When we drove thru the Montanyard ville's, the guys would throw it out to the 'yard kids. If we weren't driving very fast, they would throw it back in the truck!

Long Barrel
Central Highlands 70-71
USA and USAR 29 years 9 months, 23 days

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Long Barrel
Retired Artilleryman

I must be one of the few who liked the Ham and Lima beans-yes they were too salty but that was long before I went on a low salt diet. Yes, C rats were preferable to some of the mess halls I ate in. Don't know about WWII surplus in Vietnam, but at Fort Bragg in 1969 we were eating Korean War ones-vintage 1969.

Korea 1951 C rats, but I think there were at least two different packaging of them. One and the most common was the individual man's rations in small cans. There was for a short period of time, some squad packs, for up to 10 men to eat, mess hall style. Now you old guys were mentioning the Lucky Strike Green cigs, there was also Camels, Wings, Phillip Morris, and Rawlies. The later ones included the longer Pall Mall brand. I made a move just about 5 years ago, and found a forgotten full case of C rats, vintage 1948 Most of the food items had dried up, but the peanut butter, choclate bars, and of course the crackers were still as edible as they had ever been. I did prove to my Grandkids you could still smoke those old cigs, if you did not lose all of the tobacco out of the paper getting them out of the small package. Just wet one end, turn it around and light that end, and you can usually touch both ends of the cig together after 2 or 3 drags. As for the P 38 can opener, saw someone advertising them not too long ago, for $5 for 6 of them.

It didn't take me long before I knew everything that I wanted to know about "C" rations.

However, I was in the Marine Corps for almost a year before I figured out that my "C" Bag was really a "Sea" Bag.

Like Homer says "D'oh!"

I hated the Ham and Lima beans as well as the Eggs and Ham. The pork slices weren't to bad. Liked the beef and potatoes along with the pound cake and fruit cocktail. At least you could moisten the pound cake with he juice of the fruit cocktail. I do remember that it didn't take you long to figure out what the accessory pack code meant. As you can guess, I always grabbed the one that had the pound cake and fruit cocktail

Hawkeye

The ones I absolutely refused to eat were the one that came out in the 1970s marked "Soylent Green".

Canned corn beef (or they said it was corned beef) In Korea in the winter if you could make them hot they weren't disgusting just plain old ugh. got to Japan I thought I was in heaven. You could put on wieght there believe that. You could shower every day what a luxury. Like every baby faced cpl. I wanted to stay there forever but reality set in and then I wanted "go stateside" God Bless the US Marines changed my life forever...

Beef with spiced sauce was the basis for making good chow if you knew how to forage. The nicotine Nazis made them take smokes out of C's in the early 70's.

Every old soldier still has his P-38 on his keyring, and if he's a good old soldier, the keyring is a grenade pin!

Beanie weenies and spaghettie and meatballs were the best. I never could eat the sausage patties.
I learned to eat, and even like, the ham and green lima beans. If you could eat those, you never went hungry.

USMC 1956-59 all we got was WWII "K" Rations. As I remember the sausage patties were the worse with the yellow Lucky Strike cigarettes. I think they were called the good old days???

Does anyone have one of the C Ration cookbooks that the Tabasco Company produced?

IIRC you could write Tabasco and they would send you one free.

Mine was lost years ago, wish I still had a copy.

Tabasco was one of the few companies that did any thing for the field soldier.

rayb

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"cumplo pero no obedezco"

Tho I answeared earlier about c rats and mre's the worst food I had was issued to us (D 1/48th Inf 3rd AD)by the Belgian Army during an exercise in Germany in 1984. This was my 1st and only time that I ate cold congealed canned cow tongue.The only saving grace was the fresh bread and butter that they issued every day

I always saved the ham and eggs and warmed them somewhow for "morning" type meals, corned beef hash and lima bean ham were only eaten if nothing else was left. Pound cake,canned fruit, cookies and John Wayne bars were prized and commanded high value in trades, the small cheese and peanut butter cans were easy to keep in a pocket for a quick warm sneak a snack.

Sargeyork

Mine was a bolt action 22 with a peep sight that came from a range.I was 14.Don't remember the brand but it was very accurate.Bought a longer clip for it because it looked cool to me.Ended up trading it on a VOX organ.Wish I still had both of them,the VOX in particular...Mike

?????????

Rayb,

The Tabasco company supported the troops (and still does) very faithfully.

The chairman of the company at one time was a WWII vet and USMCR Brigadier General.

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Long Barrel
Retired Artilleryman

Could be wrong, but I bet this was supposed to be on the "what was the first gun you bought" thead.

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I always take precautions

M dad told me they would either use c-4 or burn the oil off the top of the penut butter or put bug spray in a can and heat with that.

'79 we deployed and an officer from another outfit came along to observe. God awful cold, and dark-we started a small fire to heat our C's-yep-an explosion and the outsider caught the contents of a can of jam on his butt. He thought we were being attacked. After we stopped laughing we checked to make sure he didn't have any more closed cans in the fire.

Yep Ham and M'F'er's were the worst, but I loved the big thick crackers and the canned cheese

I have used C-4 and I have also used a C-rat can full of sand and soaked with JP-4...kinda like a Sterno

Rayb,
I have my original copy of "The Charlie Ration Cookbook or No Food Is To Good For The Man Up Front". Got it in Vietnam in 1969 while serving in the Seabees. I still get a kick out of it. A copy can be viewed at this link:

http://www.thefontman.com/crat_cookbook.html

The McIlhenny company produces a later version for the MRE's. A quick call to the company will get one sent to you quickly.

Take care.

Dave

Me again, Check this link for a copy of both cookbooks.

http://david.brubakers.us/cook...rationcookbooks.html

Been there, done that.
JP-4 doesn't burn very well tho - like kerosene, wouldn't work in my Zippo either.
On the bunker line, the NCOIC had to go thru and inspect the individual bunkers and replace all the claymore's that didn't have any C4 left in them.

Bruce

During the Vietnam war Brig. Gen. Walter S. McIlhenny, U.S. Marine Corps, son of the 2nd company president of McIlhenny Company from his experiences with C-Rations as a Marine during WWII came up with the idea to send soldiers copies of the Charley Ration Cookbook filled with recipes for spicing up C-rations with Tabasco Pepper Sauce wrapped around two-ounce bottles of Tabasco Pepper Sauce along with a handful of a P-38 type can openers all in a waterproof canister.

Here is a copy you can download.

http://www.thefontman.com/crat_cookbook.html