Marines mad about MREs in Leatherneck
I farted around too long at the regular job to put this story from NBC up, because they took the link down it looks like. But, it seems that the troops aren’t too happy about having a hot meal cut out of their daily diet. So unhappy about it, they hardly sound like Marines;
“This boils my skin. One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a meal. If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other places,” one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the record.) “Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I must be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just got back from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a meal to replenish me after being away for over 9 hours.”
That’s why they make MREs, guys. I preferred MREs to hot chow because it was like getting a meal delivered and I didn’t have to stand in line and then eat with a room full of noisy people. And the folks back home get into it, too;
“MREs are an alternative for when you can’t get to healthy food. They’re supposed to be for desperation,” said Babette Maxwell, founder and executive director of Military Spouse Magazine, the wife of a Navy pilot and an advocate for service members and their families. “These guys have six to nine months left on their deployment. These are highly athletic and highly physical people, toting guns, not working any less now than before — and not working out any less either. Now, they’re short a meal and they don’t have any healthy alternatives.”
The MRE is a healthy alternative, Babette. That’s why they make them. It’s not steak or lobster, but it’s food.
Now, I’m not saying that the troops don’t deserve three hot meals everyday, what I’m saying is that they shouldn’t whine about it to the media. I suspect that’s why NBC took the story down.
“Psychologically, midrats is probably the most important of all the meals because that’s the big social time — where first (shift) crew is coming off and second (shift) crew is coming on,” Maxwell said.”That’s where you get the esprit de corps, the camaraderie. It’s not just the food you’re taking away, it’s their social sustenance.”
They can just be happy that it’s MREs and not C-Rats. I’m pretty sure they guys who are out there kickin’ doors and patrolling, if there are any of those left, are eating MREs at least once a day. But ultimately it’s like RM3(SS) wrote went he sent us the link; no one in DC is missing a hot meal. Well, except Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’ staffers who can’t afford a meal in the Congressional dining room these days, she says.
If you want to read the whole article, you can paste the link above into Google or Yahoo and get the cached copy of it.
Category: Terror War
I almost thought this was a Duffle Blog article, then realized it wasn’t.
These guys are obviously not grunts. Someone needs to smoke these turds. Better yet send them to a remote outpost out in the Korengal with some Infantry guys for 9 months where they can enjoy MREs every day and wear flea collars, while enduring the hardships of actual combat conditions.
Maybe they’ll issue some Vagisil to these guys along with their MREs — for their aching vaginas.
#52 and #53 are on the right track. This issue has nothing to do with budget cuts or sacrifice. The war is winding down and they’re trimming the logistics load of what’s coming in. I left Afghanistan in June 2011 when there were 100,000 US troops. By the end of this year there will be 34,000. If the goal is to have everyone out two years from now then they have to start cutting things down yesterday. Was anyone here in Iraq during the final couple years? How did that look with regards to this subject?
Heres a tip for anyone who isn’t a Marine.
If a Marine ISN’T complaining, then something is wrong. A Marine can get a 76 and complain they’re not getting a 92. A Marine can get hot chow and complain its not steak and lobster. We will find ANYTHING to bitch about period. It’s not that the situation really is that terrible, its that the hate keeps us warm. It gives us something to rally behind. Without the bitching we’re just poor bored souls who have to deal with the real problems
Waah, where’s my “hot plate” and “free” phone for votin’ Democrat! This sucks SOOOO much– there’s no cable either! (That’s what it sounds like.)
Let me tell you about the cost of a hot meal in the field.
Vietnam March 1970, Bongsong just off QL-1 main highway at LZ Salem. We kept telling the artillery guys that having a truck bring hot lunch every day was a bad thing that the VC were all around us & just waiting for the chance & a week later the chow truck was hit with an RPG & Killed the First Sargent who was on his way home. The hot meals stopped. I don’t understand the problem anyway MRE’s have heating bags so you do not go without a hot meal. Someone is stirring up crap for no real reason. If you can’t tolerate eating MRE’s what the hell did you join the military for?
US ARMY 168-1977
USSFM STATE DEPT. UN EGYPT/ISRAEL
US ARMY 1982-1983
US AIR FORCE 1983-1989
Love all the “damn it were tougher and I was too” bull…when welfare rats are eating better than the GI’s in the field we have a problem. Its not about C-rats, MRE’s, or the stages they have gone thru. DOD is forced to spend $50 on biofuel instead of the $5 a gallon market price. Flag ranks with no real command and we can’t support the troops? This shows where the priorities are when it comes to the troops…Shut down the Congressional chow hall and drop off cases of MRE’s each day….see how long that lasts….
Yeah, formergrunt, #45 when was I at Riley, you ignorant turd? You’re so fucking stupid that you think 1/41st has always been at Riley, aren’t you?
ok. its been 7 years since i discharged, but has the military really gotten this soft? in 04, when i was in iraq, our patrols were 18 on 6 off 6 days a week. day seven was broken down into 3 8 hour shifts of gate gaurd, FOB security, and down time. we ate MREs almost exclusivly. we would get some kabobs from the locals once in a while and if we were really lucky, we could detain someone on a monday and get to camp liberty in time for steak and lobster at the camp black jack defac. those were rare occasions, as miraculously, every officer in the company would have some need to go to liberty that day and the enlisted folks would get told to take some down time. we didnt bitch about the MREs, because at least we had something, and we never ran out of them. i thought marines were supposed to be tough! what happened to “every marine is an infantryman first” and all that propoganda? try bitching about loseing 1 hot meal a day to a real infantry unit and see what response ya get. ya dont have your social time? suck it up, eat your MREs with your buddies. yall can trade off the parts ya dont want for what ya do and have some good chats while ya are doing it. bunch of weak ass bitches
@45…shut the fuck up Dewald.
reading through these comments, im starting to think Leatherneck is the afgan equivolent to Camp liberty.
to those standing up for these whinning turds, they are complaining about a midnight meal, and having to work 6.5 hours with out a meal? oh no! what will i do! the average guy in the oil field or working construction works far harder than these POGs and does that long nearly every day with out even an MRE. these guys want to claim to be marines and cant go 6.5 hours with out a meal? these are the fat marines that thought the moto was semper pie, arent they?
So am I to understand this is much ado about nothing?
i really thought this was a duffle blog story that got slipped in some how.
When I was in we ate MCI’s or Charlie Rats. I was from down south and loved the Ham and M@therF@ckers (as we called them) in the M2 can. Most of the guys hated them so they were easy to trade for. I liked the fruit such as peaches or cakes like pound cake the best. But so did most everyone. I thought the John Wayne cookies were pretty good with peanut butter or cheese spread on them. Especially good for the trots. It wasn’t dinner at the Ritz…but it kept me alive…fightin’…and shittin’ as the Top told me. Something he told us once when we had an open “grip” session. He listened up to everyone (I think it went in one ear at out the other) and when everyone one was done, the only thing he said was “a bitchin’ troop, is a happy troop”!
I served on an aircraft carrier, which as I’m told by anyone who has not served in the navy, has the bestest food ever.
Midrats on a CVN was always a half-assed, over cooked conglomerate of whatever was not eaten during the day. Sometimes it was a hotdog with a brown lettuce salad and rice. Sometimes it was rice with a PB&J sandwich. Re-heated beef yakisoba whose noodles had hardened from exposure to the air because it had been sitting in the warmer for an hour (with rice). The one time they had tacos and rice, they stuffed them with the beef liver that no one ate for lunch. The trash cans were filled with uneaten tacos that night.
Midrats was usually skipped on a CVN. If we had MREs, we would’ve had them instead. Were the folks at Leatherneck that spoiled where midrats cannot be replaced by MREs?
IIRC: Chow times were 0530-0730, 1100-1300 & 1700-1900 hrs. If you missed those it would be your tough luck, or go to the NCO club, buy something to eat or go without. On patrol, different story but chow times were generally the same, rotating seat times or at least one C-rat each to get by, until squad was able to report back to field post.
Wow! I bet it wasn’t nearly as tough at Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sahn, or Fallujah! So typical of this generation………
@69…kinda the point. 4 hot meals a day? Yeah, good luck with that.
Teddy–we were also told being on the boats WE had the best food, and boomer fag food was better still–and based on my T-hull experience, it was in fact pretty damned good, all things considered–and no stores load!
But fast boats? Yeah, not so much. You’ve done ORSE workups, now imagine doing the “Vulcan Death March” only to have no hot food for a few days because between all the drill sets with some major electric plant casualty thrown in for one or more drills, the cooks COULDN’T cook, period.
At least we didn’t have adobo or rice every fucking meal, every fucking day. That shit was bad enough on the tender on the rare occasions we got underway on that thing.
My favorite was after my first op, pulling into Yokosuka, where as soon as lines were across there were fresh stores waiting for us…and not that crappy stuff, I mean those “big as your damn head” apples they got from the Japanese suppliers. Watching one of the ST’s rip a head of lettuce out of the box and just sit by the trunk, burying his face in that thing and eating it like a damn oversized apple–priceless.
My first overseas trip was to participate in that lovely fracas between Iran and Iraq known as the “tanker war” Mid-rats aboard our destroyer, weren’t “social” hour, it was the watchstanders and us fools in the air det hitting the mess deck long enough to choke down some leftovers…or popcorn…and getting back to work. Many years later, I deployed to Balad with the Air Guard unit I am with now. After the first day, I started eating only two meals a day to prevent myself from gaining weight. I could not begin to believe the amount of food available for us to eat…..and when we came home and did our touchy feely “reintegration” workshop, we sat in a circle for a “bitch session. You know, “what did you hate the most?” I could not believe how many people started bitching about the food….which was the BEST food I had ever had on a deployment (ditto the second trip to Balad and then the last trip to Bagram). Times have definitely changed over my 26 years.
Thanks to this story I broke a rule I started years ago about not paying shit for food while deployed until the last 2 weeks of getting ready to head home. (Mainly so stomach is used to the fast food once again..) And yes, this is at Bagram.
Last night I had Subway. Yeah no shit. SUBWAY. All they had was American Cheese and the only two items they had in to cover the cheese and meat was lettuce and tamatos, but it was fucking awesome. I was smiling all through the line.
And while in line two people were complaining about lack of toppings and the fact there were only two types of chips.
Somedays you wish you could dramatically injure every idiot around you.
Oh yeah, 18 civilian workers and five soldiers were in line to Pizza Hut…
It’s so sad its funny.
You know I read this and the same two thoughts popped into my head as everyone else: Man up and if Washington ain’t suffering why are these guys? For starters It sounds like these folks aren’t all that hard up. O k they lose the sandwich shop and hot midnight meals as well as some vending machines. Boo-frickety-hoo. As so many here have experienced, and stated: this ain’t shit. These folks can get by for a little while longer without those “luxuries” until they get home. A lot of other folks in the service had it a lot tougher before and will after than these folks. How many folks had to go without in the field in the past? What about cold C-rats, K-rats, or whatever else they could find. I honest to God wish my great uncles who were both WWII vets could give MRE’s a try. I’d love to hear their comments on them over the C-rat Surprise they had to endure in Northwest Europe and the Pacific. My second though kind of goes along with the comments about Washington. Now, IF this is all part of then general drawdown, then cool. It means these folks can go home and get fat on Mickey D’s real soon. However I wouldn’t put it past our Dear Beloved Comrade Fearless Leader to “sequester” funding from these folks while the missus takes a long spa summer vacation that she so desperately needs after being oh so stressed out working for the “little people”, or for him to go jetting off to yet another $25,000 a plate fund raiser with Jay-Z and Beyonce (or as I like to think of her, Bouncy) to help preserve “The Progressive Way”. I can see such machinations in the mind of the Big O and wouldn’t put it past him, or more precisely his minions as he “He doesn’t know a thing”. Curious that, all this time I though Joe Biden was the imbecile, however as I think more about it he may be the smart one. At least the VP knows wrong things. It appears… Read more »
I have eaten MRE’s for long stretches of time (anyone else remember the 1 MRE a day during OIF?) And as a Marine, I am disappointed in the complaining to the media about this issue, but I would like to state that there is NO WAY IN HELL that MRE’s are healthy! The amount of preservatives in them (and yes, DFAC food has preservatives too, but I promise they won’t last 5 years on a shelf) make me scared about the damage done to my body.
I just got back from a deployment to Leatherneck (PSD for a Bn Cmdr that always wanted to leave the wire) and the chow halls there were nice, great morale boost…especially for the Marines that would come in from time to time from other camps.
Summary:
-The Marines should not be whining to the media.
-However, I feel sympathy for them.
-We could cut funding from the Obama’s “national credit card” No more golf trips, no more vacations, and tell the 1st lady that she needs to fix her own make-up and hair in the mornings.
If we’re not complaining, we’re not happy. But going 6 1/2 hours without HOT chow? It’s one freakin meal….. Grab an MRE you wuss.
As far as the comments about “why should the Marines in the field suffer while the folks in DC continue to get fat?” I’m pretty sure this has always been the case.
You think George C. Marshall’s staff missed many meals during WWII? Even with war rationing, I’ll bet they ate a lot better than the soldiers in Normandy, the Marines at Iwo Jima, the sailors in the Phillipine Sea and the airmen over Germany and Austria.
I was recently at a FOB that’s stopped serving breakfast. Lunch and dinner only. I can see an MRE for lunch, but no breakfast? Dumb.