20 May 20 Garand Picture of the Day

[BEAR]

Those were trading material for me since I don't smoke. If it was a particular long field time these guys would run out of cigarettes and then I would trade for the parts of their meals. Always worked.
I had a platoon sergeant in Alaska who got tired of the bickering about the best meals being grabbed first and he would end up with Ham and Lima Beans each time since he and the LT got their meals last. He would open the ration box upside down so the meal names were on the bottom and it became the luck of the draw. That is, until we memorized where all the meals were located.

BEAR

[Ovidio]

I liked our pasta e fa.gioli (pasta with beans), really good. Beef cans, and ravioli with tomato sauce. Also black chocolate (a big, thick chunk of bitter chocolate) and grappa (Alpini had grappa, the others cordiale, a horrendous liqueur). Since I don’t like sweet stuff too much, I traded my condensed milk for pasta e fa.gioli or meat.
We also had acceptable dry biscuits and a few other things I don’t remember any more.
We got grappa also when we had guard duty in winter: each time we went out, we could grab a little bottle (0.01 litres or similar, like the minions, just a tad bigger) of grappa.
Horrible, but 50%, so it did warm you up pretty well.
In extremely cold nights, maybe even windy, it made the difference.

[Daan Kemp]

Living off rat packs for months become boring. Eating real food afterwards made for exiting bowel movements for a while.