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

Register to hide this ad
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
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!

icon_wink.gif
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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!
Click to expand...
+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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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."
icon_frown.gif
 
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
 
Originally posted by cmort666:
I greatly prefer C-rats to MREs, since other than the coffee or cocoa, they don't require water.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...
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".
 
Originally posted by 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.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-ration C rations came out in 1938 and were issued in WW2. Postwar they were technically the Meal Combat Individual.

K and D rations existed, and were issued alongside, C rations in WW2. Some units and areas - such as troops in Burma - seemed to only get K rations. Ks were more a "survival/combat" ration, whereas a C ration was supposed to take the place of a mess hall meal.

The Quartermaster department has a couple of free booklets that they make available that go into loving detail about all this stuff, and the capsule history is contained in the book about MREs that they give out to anyone who cares to ask. It's strange but oddly compelling reading to follow along with when Skittles were first used as a side item.
 
Originally posted by Alpo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-ration
Click to expand...
I stand corrected.
I did not know that they existed in WW II. I have seen a lot of K-rations in the collector market, but never any WW II C-Rats. I guess they ate 'em all.

I worked with a lot of ARVN troops on my tour. I saw K-rats on their bases from WW II. They would not eat them if ANYTHING else was available. I have no idea if we gave them to them during the war, or if they were leftover from WW II.
 
There has never been a C-rat or MRE made that I did not like. I really liked the ham and eggs. The only negative is that it came in such a small can. The spaghetti was my favorite. The only problem with it was trying to stir the spaghetti in the can while cooking it over a heat tab.

The genius that figured out that it would be a good idea to include a small bottle of Tabasco in each MRE should probably be nationally recognized. Their birthday should be a holiday, or something.


.
 
I believe Ham & Lima Beans, also known as Ham & Motherf--kers, were universally loathed. As to my favorite--it would have to be ham slices.

Take a can of ham slices and find/beg/acquire some pineapple jam. Carefully remove the ham slices and then replace putting a layer of jam between each slice. Heat and serve!
icon_smile.gif


Pound cake was my personal all time favorite of anything that came out of a green can!!!!!

Anyone else use C-4 to heat water for coffee? Anyone else use the C-4 out of the back of claymores?
 
Two notes:
In 1960 at Quantico, VA, I had my first exposure to C rats. They came in a "shoebox" w/ three meals for the day.
Included was a full pack of cigarettes, in my case a pack of Luckies in a green and red packet.
This green and red pack was discontinued in 1942 and changed to the familiar red/white bullseye pack w/the slogan "Luckies go to War"
The hamburger was lovingly referred to as "ground mouse"
During 1967-68 in 1st Amtrac Battalion at Cua Viet, RVN it was widely known that to eat the apricots that came in some C-rats was a guarentee of incoming artillery.
The place is probably still littered with unopened apricots.

Semper Fi
 
Originally posted by 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.
Click to expand...

icon_biggrin.gif
 
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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...
I last ate MREs in '84 at Fort Irwin while field testing the anti-mine plows and rollers. The "beef bar" was COMPLETELY inedible without water. It was akin to trying to eat a sharpening stone. Supposedly they've changed the meals somewhat since then, but they're somebody else's problem now.
 
eggs & ham - worst heating then up with C-4 did not help.

pound cake & peaches - best.

Lrrp rations (long range reconnaissance patrol) were pretty good when we could get them. This was in Vietnam 1969.
 
Originally posted by 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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...
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".
Click to expand...
No, I'm talking about the '84 vintage MREs. Several things required water, including the "beef bar" and the fruit cocktail, which was like styrofoam without adding water.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

mkk41
So , what kind of shooter are you?
2
Replies
35
Views
3K
feralmerril
F
D
An Engineer's take on S&W.
3 4 5
Replies
130
Views
39K
perpster
P
Stu1205
You Just Might Be A Gun Nut If.....
Replies
22
Views
6K
Golddollar
Golddollar

Latest posts

Back
Top