Cadets at Ft. Knox have rough month
Thousands of college-aged officers-in-waiting have congregated at the base for a months’ worth of classes and field drills designed to imbue the Army’s next generation of “tough, adaptable leaders” with the skills needed to “thrive in ambiguous and complex environments.”
For some aspiring lieutenants, the ambiguous and complex environment that awaited them at CST may have been more than they bargained for.
Seems a bunch of kay-dets were surprised to find mess hall employees protesting instead of working in July.
The videos’ bold-texted captions claimed the protesting DFAC employees hadn’t been paid in over a month. Richard Patterson, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Cadet Command (USACC), acknowledged in a statement to Army Times that the command “terminated the food service contract that supported the Warrior Restaurants for CST on July 1st due to the contractor not fulfilling its obligations.”
Base leadership relied on extra stockpiles of Meals, Ready-to-Eat to plug the gaps in the food supply. Adding to the displeasure of replacing hot meals with pre-packaged feed, trainees found that many of the distributed MREs had expired.
Patterson confirmed to Army Times that “some of the MREs at Cadet Summer Training have passed their inspect/test date stamped on the MRE cases by the manufacturer,” but stressed that the out-of-date packets had been tested and inspected by certified food inspectors before distribution and were safe to eat.
Okay, got the chow handled by July 7. Not well, but adequately. Then:
On the morning of July 10, Cadet Summer Training personnel received a message from Knox leadership ordering them to “refrain from drinking from all freshwater sources except the water point at Densberger and bulk water at LSA Baker,” two facilities on base.
The water issue was sorted out in a couple of days. According to one fo the cadets who had apparently vacationed there before:
“USACC willfully ignores [quality of life] for cadre and cadets every summer,” one ROTC graduate vented in response to a comment request from Army Times. “Same BS, different year.”
After having served for the entire Carter Administration debacle, I have to say this sounds fairly routine. The Reagan years were a lot better. Expired MREs? We used to routinely see Vietnam-dated C-rats as late as the ’80s.
Tip of the old Hatlo hat to Jeff LPH!
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves"
They’ll do it every time.
“Tough” and “adaptable”.
Bad/no food. Bad/no water.
Well, that’s one way to teach them.
It isn’t like there is an expiration date on the food inside, it is just an inspect by date!
Now I know that caviar and fresh mozzerella on sliced tomatoes with olive oil age quicker than “loaf, meat in sauce” but hey…its an MRE! It should be good…right!?
MREs don’t expire, they age like fine box wine
Well played.
And you haven’t even experienced the tip of the Green Weenie.
The story behind the DFAC Contract.
Looks as if some of the workers came out of town to work at Fort Knox:
“Contract Canceled After Food Disruptions For Cadet Summer Training”
https://www.thenewsenterprise.com/news/local/contract-canceled-after-food-disruptions-for-cadet-summer-training/article_35d53353-23c1-5f31-baec-b02e76076f43.html
The food contractor.
Next Level Relief LLC
1230 Red Cedar Ct, Onalaska, WI 54650-9135
https://opengovus.com/sam-entity/C1NGQXSS1LN5
“Seasonal workers who put together meals for participants in Cadet Summer Training at Fort Knox”
“put together meals” certainly inspires confidence. The only Michelin rating they get is “all weather, off-road, steel-belted radial”.
Welcome to the REAL Army, young cadet!
Heh. Ain’t that the truth.
They say that in the Army the coffee’s mighty fine,
Looks like muddy water and tastes like turpentine.
…
“Ohhh, I don’t wanna go to war no mo’,
Gee ma I wanna go home…”
A chicken jumped off a table, and started marking time.
QUOTE:
Fort Knox will now use:
“our military food specialists to operate our Cadet Warrior Restaurants.”
Damn, if they only had some cooks for the mess hall.
Holy Newspeak, Batman!
MRE’s don’t have expiration dates printed on the packs, they only have manufacture dates. There’s an inspection date on the case, but still no expiration date, so the claim that the MREs were “expired” is bogus. The “designed” shelf life of MREs is 3 1/2 years when stored at 80 degrees, but can last as long as 10 years when stored in cooler conditions.
I kind of thought these guys were supposed to be getting ready to serve in the military. Perhaps they thought they’d signed up for a country club?
As David mentioned above, when I first joined in the early ’80’s they were still working their way through Vietnam era C-rats.
A couple of the ships I served on during my rotor head days of the ’90’s and early 2000’s, the food on the mess deck was so bad, we (the helicopter detachment) would bring cases of MREs with us so we’d have something to eat when the shipboard “food” wasn’t palatable. They made great trade goods when you needed favors from the ship’s company as well.
The dates on the MRE cases use the Julien calender dating method for expiration dates and if one can’t deciper it, a K&E sliderule would come in handy
Sure, but…
I’ve personally eaten MREs for 3 months straight and was ecstatic to get T-Rats (breakfast meals only for about a week). That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have been relieved as a Mess Officer for doing this as a Company XO or relieved the Mess Officer when I was a CO for doing something like this.
CST is one of the largest and highest priorities for the Army every year. This was a very public unforced error that was easily avoidable if a competent Food Service Officer/XO/Mess Sergeant just took the time to read some labels. Not a good look at a time when the Army can’t afford to look bad.
MREs don’t expire. They have an inspect date. If they are inspected and pass they are still good.
Yup. Enjoying tuna with noodles made warm under their armpit because it was better than the MKT chow (even if it wasn’t winter) out in the field in Germany would make ’em appreciate that. (If the MRE ain’t inflated like a ballon animal it’s not “bad,” kids!)
Your Right 5JC on the inspection dates on the boxes. Again, I forgot about that.
Stop whining and move out.
Poor widdle snowflakes. No need to check my field, for I know it is barren and I have none to give. I remember the summer of ’71 at the Hard Knocks School for Wayward Boys. ‘Specially Misery and Agony Hills with a full combat load that weighed nearly as much as I did. Our field rations included a mix of Cs, Ks, and even some of the 10 n 1 packs. Ate many a “meal” that was packaged before I was born. Also remember the call for “everyone in this platoon whose name begins with Private, report to the Mess Sgt for extra training”. Good Times.
Seems to me this whole situation is caused by the nefarious activities of the food contractor.
I went through the same place in the summer of ’72. Didn’t think I’d ever been so miserable. Then they shipped me to Fort Lost in the Woods, Misery. I was wrong.
We had canned goods with dates from the late 1940’s including horsemeat along with 1940’s canned spam which we cumshawed for parts from the Philly/brooklyn yard birds while in the Philly drydock getting a refit before the ship changed home ports from Norfolk NOB to San Diego. Easy to fry the spam over a cleaned up piece of steel with a torch.
Maybe it would be better if we used the 92G’s to cook for the soldiers, like they were trained to do in the first place…
You want the cooks to actually COOK?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Expired MREs?
Is it possible for the Chicken ala King to expire?
Only if it explodes…
Out of date MREs?
THAT’S what they wanna complain about?
Back in my day when we ran out of C-rats we made do with DIRT! And mudpuddle water!
And damnit—we loved it!!!!!!
Geee……I have a lot of MREs that I’ve had since I retired (20+ years ago). Mebbe I should look at them & see if they’re still good…..or not.
Besides eating one & seeing if I get sick/die, how else is a good way to test them?
When you get a bad one, you will know. Not quite as bad as a dead body that’s been sitting for a while but pretty close.
The phrase “rancid ass blast” comes to mind.
I went to OSUT (19D Cavalry Scout) at Ft Knox when is was the home of Armor. September – December of 1987.
US Army Reconnaissance School.
Home of the Patton Armor Museum.
One of those states and times of year where if you didn’t like the weather, you just had to wait a minute.
All 4 seasons in a day.
I was sickened to hear when it became Department of Human Resources.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Human Resources Command…ironically, it shares its acronym with the Human Rights Campaign. For a while the latter would pop up first in search results. Knox is now also the home of USAREC, and where aspiring Recruiters earn their badges before venturing off into the wonderful world of SQI “4” land and maybe eventually converting to 79R.
I first stepped foot on Knox during Memorial Day weekend 2004. I was still an evil Natsy reenactor at the time and stationed at Campbell, so when my East Coast-based reenacting unit was invited to a scripted event, a few others and I linked up. It was fun; since there were only 3-4 from our Kampfgruppe (what we called a few affiliated units), we were tasked with manning a Pak 40. We knocked out one or two M3 tanks before being “killed” and searched by the GIs, and afterward we got to ride on some of the armor and got a “behind-the-ropes” tour of the Patton Museum. We had to lose the hobnailed boots, but the only displays off-limits to us were a recently recovered StuG III and a Desert Storm capture T72, both with original paint and markings. I have pictures of myself on a Ketterkrad, 88mm Flak gun, in the Panther, and with a few other pieces. The following day a few members of staff took a group of us to the motor pools. Outstanding collection, but unfortunately a lot of it is rotting away under a covered area (but otherwise exposed to the elements) on Sand Hill at Benning.
I also did PLDC at Knox in ’06 and thought the Armor NCO Academy was much more squared away than the Infantry NCOA was when I went to BNCOC a year later.
True story: while some of the collection is still on Sand Hill, most has been moved to Harmony Church and put in a massive building (used to be for Bradley Mechanics), and is probably one of the top collections in the world. Amazing work and far better than it was when back at Knox.
On the one hand, these are young men and women training to become the future leaders of the US Army. Treat them well, get them what they need, and respect them for the sacrifices yet to come.
On the other hand, welcome to the Army! As others have said, MREs don’t necessarily expire. It’s all in how they’re stored. In the late-’90s I (a civilian at the time) kept a box of MREs in my service truck. Around ’99 I was eating MREs with M&Ms in 1992 Summer Olympics packaging. My dad served in the late-’50s through early-’60s and, much like the comments about Vietnam-era C-Rats in the ’80s, he had stories of receiving WWII-surplus rations.
In early April 2003 we mighty Iron Rakkasans (the only battalion from the 101st to earn the Presidential Unit Citation for OIF I [we were attached to 3ID]) went into Baghdad with only what we carried. The first week found us eating our three stripped MREs before supply and support finally caught up and we got MRE resupply and even t-rats. Later, we got hot-As once a week, but that was largely an MRE deployment, eating food stored in hot as hell CONEX’s in the middle of the desert. Honestly, I was sucking more from lack of water, as I’d gotten used to eight 1.5 liter bottles a day in Kuwait, only to be rationed to two bottles a day for the first few weeks in-country at FARP Shell and in Baghdad.
How was that again- “When you’re out of everything except the enemy.” What was that called?
😉😎
Patrolling in Hondo between Mocoron and the border. We got word to destroy all of our main meals. Either expired or food borne hazard. Dont remember. No Resupply. We went a couple of days with no significant food.
To the Cadot’s, all I have to say is: Welcome to the Party!
Went over a week without resupply in the jungle in the Viet of the Nam. First, we ran out of C-rats, then cigarettes, and finally low on water. BN ordered us to march 14 klicks to the firebase, as there were no birds flying because of weather. But, just after trying to bum a cigarette from my radiomen, got a call that birds were inbound and get to an LZ. The rest of my tour, food, even if only C-rats, was never a problem.
Your life was much harder than mine and I know you did it for “Our Sake”.
Welcome Home!!!!
We went into the mountains west of Quang Tri and somebody forgot to tell the ops types that “air-mobile” don’t mean shit when the monsoon arrives. The flying folks get all upset about things like “controlled flight into terrain” when visibility is zero even on the ground–they don’t even do medevacs. At least we never ran short of water; just filled canteens from the water flowing down the tree trunks.
Meh, it’s a war zone, shit happens.
In Germany, however, my company once went two weeks on half rations—literally. One memorable meal was one (1) small pork chop, one(1) serving spoon of applesauce and one(1) slice of white bread. Evidently the damn Nazis cut the supply lines to Wildflecken.
Interesting place, Wildflecken. If I remember correctly it was one of the few places in Germany where hardship duty pay was authorized in the 1960s.
My father in law told a funny story about being in Phu Cat (before it was a major airbase) where they went a few weeks without water. Plenty of beer, though, with which they bathed, brushed their teeth, and drank.
One hopes, not out of the same helmet, at the same time?
Well at least they didn’t come under attack as happened in the past
My favorite scene…
Watching the tankers pretend to pass out in the motor pool when Miss Galore and her girls pass over head.
I wonder if All-Points Logistics has the contract?
I could see Phildo rat fucking the chow and lining his pockets based upon his claims.
I would not put that past him, being the Dick Cheese Connoisseur he is.
One supposes that none of those kids are trying to branch Infantry.
I helped finish off those old C rats.”
Me, too. As far as I could tell, there was no significant flavor differences between Korean War vintage C rats and brand new late ’60s. Menu was slightly different.