Yesterday's Weapons Forums

Wifey recently mentioned the possibility of having koolaid on hand for grand daughter. This was followed by my strongly worded message that we would not have any in the house.

I suggested actual fruit juice & she was good with that.

Why such a negative outlook on koolaid?

First tour, our post at Cam Lo consisted of very basic amenities. We lived in underground bunkers. The watch bunkers were heavily sand bagged & had places to sleep, as well. Our mess hall was a tent with sand bags piled chest high all around with rough lumber picnic tables. The corrugated metal roof was holed in many places.

The last table was our post office. Mail was just dumped there & you rooted around for your letters. The system actually worked. There was a mail bag into which outgoing mail was stuffed for the next supply run to Dong Ha.

Our supplies were also quite basic. There was an Army bakery in Dong Ha & we got whole loaves. Slice your own! Which amounted to Texas toast sized slices for sammiches.

While standing watch all night we could go to the mess tent for break snacks. This was almost always thick slices of aging bread and bologna. No sweets. Just sammich stuff. Mustard in gallon cans was the only condiment.

What to drink? Koolaid! The cook always made a big tub, and for some unknown reason, it was always lime flavor. Always. There was a lid on the big tub and beside it was a large French fry skimmer. Before filling a canteen cup with warm koolaid, you used the skimmer to lift bugs from the drink. Besides flying bugs, there were usually a few water beetles & so forth. Yum. Given our circumstances, no lights were allowed at night. A red lens flashlight was about it. You didn't want to impede your night vision. In any case, you didn't always get all the bugs from your drink. Pretty much never actually.

So we would make a big sammich - slap on mustard ( which was usually free of bugs) - and take a canteen cup of mostly bug free drink to wash it down. Then back to the bunker to enjoy it while watching for movement in the surrounding countryside.

The sammich was fairly straight forward if you could mentally convince yourself a few weevils found in the bread were just particles of coarse pepper with legs. The koolaid was... bad. Our water was heavily chlorinated, and lime koolaid tastes like crap on a good day. The net result was... nasty.

I am convinced my digestive tract is stained green to this very day. There's a lot of food color & dye in the stuff.

So none in the house, thank you very much. It's not good for children and other living things. The bugs always died in it. SW

....sound yummy...!!! ....end result after all these year-lime green bowels.....we seemed to have an opposite dilemma .....from time to time the JP-5 jet fuel 'somehow' found its way into the water lines that supplied the soda machines on the mess deck.....the drinking fountains occasionally had "NO SMOKING" signs posted....now after all these years I know why I fart so much......

both make me wonder how survival was as good as it was on the food/drink , my FILs MREs sound kinda good in light of the discussion , wonder why the wife never wants to see one again ???????????

Actually true with tobacco. The thing that always worried me was liver flukes. Then there were the pot bellied pigs. I thought the pot bellies were from intestinal parasites.

Apparently that's not always the case. But I never ate local piggy parts. Actually the only meat I had in that country for 2 years came from a can. SW

spam - its what is for breakfast

SPAM is tasty with rice, hint, hint, hint. Kool Aid is nasty with US water. Does Mountain Dew turn your bowels green as well? I'm so doomed that way.

Best Regards,

Mark

Nothing beats a "Cool Piss" brand Korean made fruit juice. Wait, saying "Cool Piss" while reading the label in Korean in front of your wife and in-laws does. Wife raises her hand and threatens to smack me upside the head each time I say those lovely words with much affection.

SPAM = Stuff Posing As Meat.

Actually, I like it once in a while - fried with over easy eggs on top & hash browns. I even have a can in my locker at Bill for emergencies. It probably expired several years ago. I saw the can a few months ago & it hadn't started swelling yet. The canned ravioli probably isn't much good, either.

I hate tossing food, though. SW

Throw it at herds too close to the tracks to scare them off. Else, use a crock pot.

Best Regards,

Mark

I didn't know SPAM could go bad. Fried up on bread, with a big slab of cheese, smothered in ketchup. MMMMMMMMM yummy!

...saw a can of Hickory Smoked Spam at Wallyworld-couldnt resist,so I picked it up....when I was throwing together a home made pizza there was nuthin' around like pepperoni or other meat to throw on top so I sliced up some chunks of that...it was pretty damn good...!!! ....MUCH better than regular Spam...!!!.....dont be shy-give it a try...!!!

Smoked spam, might just have to find some and try it.

Rad

Looks utterly gross and doesn't smell much better either but is actually very yummie and nutricious: Slowly melt (fry) contents of 1 can of spam (or is it spam of can, I get confused sometimes ..) in a pot, add contents of 1 can of white beans in tomato sauce, heat slowly while stirring with a wooden spoon until you get uniform cementlike consitancy. Add Tabasco to personal taste.
Serve steaming hot and enjoy the revolted expressions of your tablemates

A

....oh heck-I love Slovenski Blood Sausage-a form of Haggis ...that seems to gross out everyone more than when I eat SPAM...

The extent of my unusual food is RMO = fried, breaded bull private parts. Pretty darn tasty! SW

mario - seems we have hagis in common - strange when you look at scotland - itly in relation to the globe , but then we seem to agree and relate on a lot of other levels as well

My Kool Aid VN War Story ... my mother mailed me
a carton of lemon lime Kool Aid which I gave to my Vietnamese Rangers moments before we got on birds and headed out. Not too long after , I had a major morale problem on my hands as all my strikers were yelling "number 10, number 10". Come to find out...this was unsweetened lemon lime Kool Aid and it was not well received ! So much for good deeds and winning hearts and minds. I made up for it later on by taking a 3/4 ton to Bien Hoa , full of SKS's and selling them to the USAF there and distributing the "Loot Money" to the Rangers like a pirate captain did back in the days when the treasure was divided amongst the crew. Hoover had no vacuum cleaners better than my Vn Rangers, they could sweep an area and find every weapon and NVA equipment hidden ...all later finding its way to the souvenir starved rear echelon pukes at Bien Hoa or Long Binh.