SPAM and what else?

[Peter Laidler]

One of the civilian mess caterers at Warminster was on the compo ration procurement and evaluation side of catering for many years before he went over to the 'industrial catering' side of life. He told me that this meant dealing with the actual make-up, quality, sealing and packaging etc etc of all Army field rations. It was a very complex process dealing with calorific values and all that palava, must be able to be eaten hot and cold, ability to be heated to x temp using 1 hexi block in x amount of water. A lot of it was tested on the blokes based at the Demonstration Battalion at Warminster in hot and cold climates. Of course, they wanted all commercial boil in the bag stuff that they get at home but out in the field ain't home with a big hot stove or oven! They also wanted sweets and crisps etc etc as snacks!!! It also had to last a long time and remain tightly sealed for years. Chocolate and sweets were formulated to keep off thirst so very little salt content. Best was tins of course but big drawbacks so double sealed and lined bags were necessary but were easily split.

All these conditions made it VERY expensive to procure. But a very interesting mess caterer.

The good thing about it was after evaluation by the teams after field testing changes etc etc, they could introduce it into the general mess fare a bit at a time and utilise it. I used to take the sweets and chocolate bars up to the workshop res room for the blokes to have at break times. They could taste the difference between it and the commercial chocolates/sweets that looked similar. Also took the odd case of unused stuff for my sons school CCF (Cadets) and they'd use it on their field days and training exercises.

To be honest, there must be the makings of a good little book about the various field rations used among the armies........ After all, someone's written a book about webbing kit!