Do you remember "C" rations? If so, what was the worst and best?

[marine2541]

I hated Ham and Lima beans! The company making the "C" rations must have owned a salt mine! There was so much salt in them they were inedible! Every time I was given Ham and Lima Beans I would claim to be Jewish so I could trade it for something else!

 

[will5a1]

Cold green eggs and ham on a cold day, ice cold pork patties (I think that's what they were called) were awful also. The tuna was my favorite, and I sort of enjoyed making a icing from the cocoa and spreading it on any of the canned cakes.

 

[ChuckS1]

I liked the canned turkey and the beanie weenies. Hated the spaghetti. Ham and eggs was okay if you had Tabasco sauce. Pound cake and canned peaches were good. Heck, I even liked the fruitcake!

 

[cmort666]

I liked anything but the ham and eggs, because eggs of any kind make me puke. Somebody stole my C-rats one day and I ended up stuck with the ham and eggs. Fortunately, it was so cold that they had congealed into a tasteless mass that wasn't quite nasty enough to make me sick.

I greatly prefer C-rats to MREs, since other than the coffee or cocoa, they don't require water.

 

[Skip Sackett]

This is going to date me but I think ours were left over from WWII!

Eggs and ham were horrible but could be eaten if you employed heavy amounts of Tabasco Sauce!

There were some that were as good as store bought canned food, I just don't remember which ones!

 

[walnutred]

Smith Crazy,

In the late 60's my friends were buying early 1950 dated C-Rations at the surplus store for camping. My older brother came home from Vietnam in early '69, looked at the C-rats and said "Where are you guys getting this new stuff? All the stuff we got in 'Nam was WW2 surplus". I told him that what we were hearing on the news was that in Nam they were getting dehydrated rations in the field, not the C-Rats. He said they did try the dehydrated stuff but no one though about the lack of potable water in the jungle. So the space age stuff was swapped for WW2 surplus C-Rats.

 

[truckermike]

C Rats! I guess my favorites was beans& weannies and pork slices. Heated up any of them were OK.
MRE's were a great improvement.

 

[Big Rich]

Ham and eggs weren't bad, as long as you had Tobasco sauce. Beenie weenies were my favorite.
Ham and lima beans- hatred them!they made a good target, but that was it.

 

[Dan Cash]

Originally posted by ChuckS1:
I liked the canned turkey and the beanie weenies. Hated the spaghetti. Ham and eggs was okay if you had Tabasco sauce. Pound cake and canned peaches were good. Heck, I even liked the fruitcake!

+1 I really liked the fruit cake. Cs were so useful. Toilet paper, matches, 4 cigarettes, salt/pepper, flat ware and food. Light the box and your food got warm and eliminated a good portion of the trash. What more could a man want? Yes, a can opener. I still have the first P38 I was issued in 1971. It is on my key ring and I will take it to my grave.

 

[imjin138]

Beef and potato slices were ok, and the Ham amd eggs. I always looked for the pound cake. The beans and weenies were Ok but the pork slices were just nasty.

Who decided to put the fruit cake in those things, and don't forget the John Wayne bars.

 

[Macher]

In the late fifties my uncle gave us some rations he brought back to take camping.

We were all thrilled to find the little packs of cigarettes inside but were confused as the Lucky Strikes packs had a green emblem instead of the familiar red one.

 

[dennis40x]

http://gruntfixer.homestead.com/files/crats.html

Yes I remember them. Four decades have diminished some what how much I disliked them. What I recall is that for an extended period of time we were limited to two meals a day due to a supply problem. At two per day one learns to eat every thing provided no matter the taste or vintage.

Ham and lima beans were referred to as ham and mother f$%&#%s. If one took the crackers, broke them up, and mixed them in along with the midget can of cheese spread. (With the cheese one had to drain off the oily fluid.) Heat the mix up it was tolerable. The beef and potatoes I’m reminded about them by smell when opening a can of dog food.

Proper disposal of the cans was a priority. The toilet paper a necessity and if you were a smoker the cigarettes even aged Camels were tolerable.

 

[m657]

In the early 60s my cousins were on a smoke jumper cleanup crew of "2". They were airdropped supplies for "20". They hauled their precious load home in an overloaded 41 Ford pickup dragging it's tires on the fenders and loaded the basement with a ton of stuff.

Don't recall whether C-rats or K-rats. The large round crackers were inedible, as was the peanut butter....until you mixed in the grape-like jelly substance....then if you had enough fluid to wash down the stuff, it actually tasted "OK".

Whatever the meat-like road kill body-part stuff was, mostly went to the dogs after a few experimental tastes.

 

[Thicker]

I really liked the pound cake and Pall Mall cigarettes.

 

[EQGuy]

I never made it to Nam. My overseas assignment was Ft Wainwright Alaska so I did not get all of that many C rats. When we did get C rations they were normally an improvement to the chow we got in the mess hall. I loved the Lima Beans and Fruit Cake. I did not smoke so I would trade the cigs for Fruit cake. Somewhere I have a photo in my slide collection of a garbage can with an immersion heater in a solid block of ice along the banks of the Tannana River. We were on maneuvers in February of 1969 and the temp was hovering at -50F. The “cook” would fire up the immersion heater and in about ½ hour the water would start to boil and he would toss in all C Rat meals and we got hot chow for lunch. I sure am glad I joined the Engineers instead of the Infantry.

 

[paladin42]

I was training at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in the late 60s I think. It was a bitterly cold day in January with rain/snow coming down. My Sgt. and I were huddled under a poncho trying to keep the water out of our C-rat cans. I made some comment about the potatoes tasting funny. The Sgt. looks into my can and says, "Sir, those aren't potatoes. Those are grease lumps."

 

[straightshooter1]

If you were hungry enough, any of them were "tolerable."

But the worst of the worst was the ham and eggs.
Cold, heated, hot sauced, salted, peppered, cheesed, (never tried peanut buttering them) or crackered, they really were awful.

And, IME, no one would trade you anything for them.

The Ham and M....s as we called them were not really that bad. And anything with beef was almost "good."

But I don't miss any of them.

Bob

 

[GatorFarmer]

Originally posted by cmort666:
I greatly prefer C-rats to MREs, since other than the coffee or cocoa, they don't require water.

MREs don't require water except to use the heating packet that is enclosed. If you just rip open the pouches and squeeze them down your throat or spoon them down, then no water is needed to prepare them.

 

[handejector]

I see you guys talking about leftover WW II C-Rats. There were NONE.
In WW II, it was K-Rations. I am not sure when C-Rats came out, but they did not exist in WW II.

The C-Rat I liked the least was Ham & Eggs.
The best, which was rarely seen, was Salt Pork. It looked like white Spam, but, to me, was delicious.
Ham & Limas, and Spaghetti, were awful cold. Heated, they weren't bad.

The pound cake, by far, was the best thing in them. Absolutely delicious, and VERY tradeable.

 

[handejector]

Originally posted by GatorFarmer:

Originally posted by cmort666:
I greatly prefer C-rats to MREs, since other than the coffee or cocoa, they don't require water.

MREs don't require water except to use the heating packet that is enclosed. If you just rip open the pouches and squeeze them down your throat or spoon them down, then no water is needed to prepare them.

cmort is thinking of the Viet Nam era "LRRP" rations. They were similar to MRE's that had to be hydrated. Carrying potable water was the problem that killed them, and led to the MRE- "Meal, Ready to Eat".