Speaker 1: This episode re enacts scenes of war and includes gunfire.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion advised who are tuning into Service Johnny, the
Speaker 1: strict private first class that are in stories of hunger
Speaker 1: and war. They joined a service Women Pearl Harbor Member
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor, a production from My Heart Radio. We used
Speaker 1: to just give these people the food from our miss kits.
Speaker 1: You ain't what you could get, and be thankful for
Speaker 1: what you were getting. I'm your host, Jacqueline Raposo, Men
Speaker 1: and women of the United States. On this day, more
Speaker 1: than sixteen million young Americans are surviving. The three hundred
Speaker 1: year old American customer of the Musland has it all
Speaker 1: times called for the fortitude of women. Meanwhile, the British
Speaker 1: government has begun to racition food and Prime Minister Chamber
Speaker 1: on Monday from the Thailand and from our Nigi Empa
Speaker 1: Mount and the struggle single handed until we went joined
Speaker 1: by the minted rate might of set Raka and later
Speaker 1: by the overwhelming power and regales of the United States
Speaker 1: of America. We must be the great awesenal of democracy.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen thirties, kids going to school, or
Speaker 1: working their family farms, or just struggling to find food
Speaker 1: outlasted the Great Depression, only to find themselves barreling into
Speaker 1: what would become the deadliest conflict in human history. We've
Speaker 1: moved through twelve of their individual war and food stories
Speaker 1: this season, but honestly, I still find it a little
Speaker 1: hard to connect their intimate experiences with what history books
Speaker 1: tell us of this overwhelmingly big World War two picture.
Speaker 1: And so in our final episode this season, we're going
Speaker 1: to compile all some crossovers from our veterans for two
Speaker 1: guests who can help us better make sense of things.
Speaker 1: What changed the most when it comes to combat and puisine.
Speaker 1: What part did these young men and women play in
Speaker 1: moving things forward? And where can we most find ourselves
Speaker 1: in their stories. It's a completely different type of fighting
Speaker 1: or having to go a tree to tree to root
Speaker 1: out the Germans. He had to look for the uniform,
Speaker 1: what the helmet looked like. Not only that they had
Speaker 1: the anti air thrasher Pickadilly circus. That was a code
Speaker 1: name on the landing kraft. You were supposed to stop
Speaker 1: a coordinates. Who's on the coordinate the infantry of the Marines.
Speaker 1: You don't want to hit them, you want head of them.
Speaker 1: So with them there are artillery observers on the front
Speaker 1: lines listening to the cat with These men are describing
Speaker 1: as what we call Class Witsyan war. This is my coal.
Speaker 1: It did three tours in Iraq to as a private
Speaker 1: contractor and a third as a paramilitary civilian with the
Speaker 1: Defense Intelligence Agency while he was also a Coast Guard officer.
Speaker 1: He's also authored many fantasy books and two history books
Speaker 1: on ancient combat while simultaneously working in law enforcement and
Speaker 1: private intelligence. He doesn't specialize in World War two history,
Speaker 1: but he has a strong sense of the community our
Speaker 1: veterans are a part of, plus a jacked up analytical mind.
Speaker 1: Class Witsian war is traditional warfare as we know it
Speaker 1: from the Peace of Westphalia up until by argue it's with.
Speaker 1: But klass Witzian warfare is also known as trinitarian warfare,
Speaker 1: and trinitarian warfare is there's three things you do to
Speaker 1: win a war. You destroy your enemy's army, You occupy
Speaker 1: his territory. Can you break the will of the military
Speaker 1: infrastructure to carry on the contest? Right? That is how
Speaker 1: wars have been thought. These are wars of maneuver where
Speaker 1: military units at the Regimental Battalion Company level are maneuvering
Speaker 1: against one another, we're charging, retreating in set piece battles,
Speaker 1: having fos forward, observers calling in fire. None of that
Speaker 1: has changed. And was that the same in World War One?
Speaker 1: As well as that a strategy the same. I think
Speaker 1: they might have had to use signal flags and marker flags,
Speaker 1: as matter of fact, I'm almost sure they did, but
Speaker 1: the concepts were still basically the same. My point is
Speaker 1: is that there isn't that big a difference technologically between
Speaker 1: what these men were experiencing what's going on now. B
Speaker 1: M one is still my favorite long gun. It's the
Speaker 1: same and one that these guys were using, but it's
Speaker 1: just got fiberglasses that of would that carried. The nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven it's my favorite pistol. It's called the nineteen eleven
Speaker 1: because it's from nineteen eleven eight. It is the gun
Speaker 1: that the Germans had, the best gun of the whole war.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, right over my head that the
Speaker 1: German burp gun, our submachine gun got. We've never seen
Speaker 1: it burp gun before. I said, I want to go
Speaker 1: with the p key votes so we could go fast
Speaker 1: and they could not go fair. The English, the first
Speaker 1: people to in radar. They were able to keep the
Speaker 1: fighter planes on the ground until the German planes got
Speaker 1: close enough than the fighter planes took off, and they
Speaker 1: had full fuel tanks. Because it was about le Bretton
Speaker 1: wanted the fighter a machine gun, spring even more bullets,
Speaker 1: about zooming faster, a plane navigating more precisely, these things
Speaker 1: seemed to make a huge difference for the bodies in
Speaker 1: the fight. Our being this great arsenal of democracy. Does
Speaker 1: technology really not make a difference on a greater scale?
Speaker 1: The answer is more complicated. It's rather the interplay of
Speaker 1: technology and doctrine, or the interplay of technology and tactics.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a perfect case in point. We'll go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the American Civil War. There's
Speaker 1: a famous truism in military theory that we are always
Speaker 1: fighting the last war, and we mean that negatively right.
Speaker 1: Napoleonic wars, which was the main experience that most generals
Speaker 1: in the American Civil War had, were wars fought largely
Speaker 1: with smooth bore muskets. A smooth bore musket means that
Speaker 1: the barrel of the musket does not have rifling, which
Speaker 1: is to say that I could be aiming straight ahead
Speaker 1: of me, and when I pulled that trigger, that ball
Speaker 1: could go at a forty five degree angle off to
Speaker 1: the right. It's got nothing to do with what I'm
Speaker 1: aiming at. By the time the American Civil War was fought,
Speaker 1: rifling was standard. Your aiming at that's where your bullet's
Speaker 1: gonna go. But you're still using napoleonic tactics designed to
Speaker 1: deal with these incredibly inaccurate musket's people lining up present
Speaker 1: are and then shooting into a mass. But now you're
Speaker 1: doing it with an accurate weapon. So the casualties were extreme,
Speaker 1: and it took way too long for the tactical thinking
Speaker 1: to match the shift in technology. Trench warfare in the
Speaker 1: First World War is another great example. The crew served
Speaker 1: tripod fired machine gun was new tech. Those tactics of
Speaker 1: trench warfare of going over the top and racing into
Speaker 1: the enemy's trenches, going into the teeth of that fire.
Speaker 1: Those tactics were designed before you were facing two guys
Speaker 1: with a tripod mounta machine go could take out a
Speaker 1: tire company just sitting there going left and right. There's
Speaker 1: that amazing scene in the beginning of saving Private Ryan,
Speaker 1: or the moment that Higgins boats Gangway drops and then
Speaker 1: he says, God, the imn beviated dropped the f and
Speaker 1: rim and I had no choice. I dropped the rip
Speaker 1: and then the scene came into the boat and about
Speaker 1: fourteen guys immediately were killed. I'm sure that that occurred,
Speaker 1: that doctrine did not shift quickly enough to adapt to
Speaker 1: advances in technology, and that that cost lives in extreme cases.
Speaker 1: Truman found out that the invasion of Jap band would
Speaker 1: have been wished twice the size of Normandy. So this
Speaker 1: is when President Drumman says, dropped two bombs. The Japanese
Speaker 1: have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can
Speaker 1: foresee what it was. Let's talk about what we mean
Speaker 1: when we say the deadliest conflict in human history. The
Speaker 1: United States use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima killed
Speaker 1: eighty thou people instantly. Three days later, forty more were
Speaker 1: killed by a second bomb on Nagasaki. Imagine how many
Speaker 1: more were affected by nuclear fallout. There's the butta On
Speaker 1: death March that killed twenty thousand, the one point one
Speaker 1: million prisoners murdered in Auschwitz alone. Gross estimates of worldwide
Speaker 1: World War two casualties are counted at fifteen million battle deaths,
Speaker 1: twenty five million battle wounds, and forty five million civilian deaths.
Speaker 1: But those are really gross estimates because reports vary so widely.
Speaker 1: Field strategy might not have changed during or because of
Speaker 1: this war. But yes, both technology and doctrine worked against
Speaker 1: human bodies and cost human lives, and that leads us
Speaker 1: to the biggest difference between this war and all others.
Speaker 1: December seventh, nineteen one, a date which will live in infamy.
Speaker 1: The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked
Speaker 1: by label and their courses of the Empire of Japan.
Speaker 1: Three of my classmates and myself, we're going to Long
Speaker 1: Beach unless my brother and two of his friends joined
Speaker 1: the navy. They were so in demand of nurses that
Speaker 1: I said to nursing my girlfriend and I said, let's
Speaker 1: go join the army, and we did. My mother had
Speaker 1: a very hard time. She had three sons and we
Speaker 1: roll in combat. I had seven older brothers. They all
Speaker 1: served but two. She had seven sons and they were
Speaker 1: all in the service. Keene had a lot of kids
Speaker 1: who went in. Ten million, twenty thousand, nine and nine
Speaker 1: three that's how many men were inducted into the armed
Speaker 1: forces via the draft. Between nineteen forty and ninety six,
Speaker 1: another six million would voluntarily join up plus three and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand women and millions of others, building ships and
Speaker 1: planes and tanks and guns as fast as they could.
Speaker 1: This was a massive war. Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens,
Speaker 1: our way of life, our very freedom came under attack
Speaker 1: in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. Not
Speaker 1: eleven I was galvanized. I think like so many other
Speaker 1: people in the United States, I wanted to get in
Speaker 1: the fight, and I wanted to get in the fight quickly.
Speaker 1: But Not eleven failed to galvanize the rush to recruiting stations.
Speaker 1: We might presume it did it. Military personnel numbers grew
Speaker 1: by less than thirty thousand between two thousand and one
Speaker 1: and two and two, and they've lingered at a total
Speaker 1: of less than point five percent of our population over
Speaker 1: the last decade. What generation warfare is what a lot
Speaker 1: of people call coin counterinsurgency warfare, the notion that mau
Speaker 1: Ze Tongue really revolutionized in his famous book Guerilla Warfare.
Speaker 1: Do you have hyperpowers at this part? You're not going
Speaker 1: to defeat the United States Army. No one is going
Speaker 1: to defeat the United States Army in a set piece battle,
Speaker 1: even in No. One, not China, not Russia, no One
Speaker 1: in a field battle. There's no point in even trying.
Speaker 1: We have superior technology, we have superior training. We have
Speaker 1: not necessarily more numbers, but the right numbers, the infrastructure
Speaker 1: that's required. What Mao hit on is that the way
Speaker 1: you beat a hyperpower you have one goal in class.
Speaker 1: What's the and trinitarian warfare. Let's break their will to fight,
Speaker 1: but class what's is talking about their military? What Mau pioneered,
Speaker 1: you break the will of the populace to carry on
Speaker 1: the con test. How do you feel like World War
Speaker 1: Two shifted a sense of patriotism in the militaria? Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, there's so many things that are different. The
Speaker 1: first and most obvious is that World War two is
Speaker 1: an existential crisis, not just for the United States but
Speaker 1: for the world. The first Great air raid on Paris,
Speaker 1: which took place today, evidently had two objectives. It is
Speaker 1: reported this morning that German bombers and fighting claims are
Speaker 1: again over southeast British coastal towers by Brown. But you're
Speaker 1: on the deed and ocean. We're we're growing country and
Speaker 1: growing great in the air. The stark contrasts between the
Speaker 1: mission of the access Powers and the mission of the
Speaker 1: Allied powers. No war sense has had that existential states
Speaker 1: Vietnam or Korea for the United States, like, we lost,
Speaker 1: So what what is the impact on people living in
Speaker 1: the United States? Not my There's another thing. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: If you google this, you can find videos made during
Speaker 1: World War Two teaching service members how to behave in
Speaker 1: a British public away. And incidentally, the beer isn't cold
Speaker 1: in England. No, they don't like it cold and they
Speaker 1: have many ice So if you like beer, you better
Speaker 1: like it warm. What's that add difference between bitter and mild.
Speaker 1: The video keeps synthasizing you're in the uniforming the army,
Speaker 1: don't do these things, don't start a fight, don't get drunk.
Speaker 1: But with the advent of cell phone technology, anytime you
Speaker 1: screw up in uniform, that's going on Facebook. The military
Speaker 1: is reacted to that. So we hide our military. Now
Speaker 1: we take those uniforms off. You get in trouble if
Speaker 1: you're in uniform. No one ever told me that this
Speaker 1: was the motive, But the general spirence I got was
Speaker 1: they were afraid someone would attack me or hurt me,
Speaker 1: which is not true. And they were afraid I would
Speaker 1: do something that would bring discredit on the United States
Speaker 1: military and it will be caught on a cell phone
Speaker 1: and put on Facebook and put on other social media.
Speaker 1: That culture of patriotism, it really did go out. And
Speaker 1: that's how to real cost In the United States. We
Speaker 1: are citizen soldiers, citizens sailors. I always say this when
Speaker 1: I talk about the military. We are you and you
Speaker 1: are us. We are part of the community. We are
Speaker 1: not separate from it. That's one of the great strengths
Speaker 1: of the American military. We'll hear more from Mike incoming
Speaker 1: seasons as we continue to observe shifting warfare. But in
Speaker 1: studying World War Two alone, the only big picture I
Speaker 1: can see our humans slaughtering other humans, a very masculine
Speaker 1: way of pillaging and ruling the world. This is an
Speaker 1: ongoing conversation, but after centuries of warfare, I can't begin
Speaker 1: to envision a peaceful world in the end. I am
Speaker 1: hoping here, and that really is something that humans have
Speaker 1: a unique capacity to do. Hope, because without hope. Why
Speaker 1: do anything right? Then you're just completely nihilist. This is
Speaker 1: what Obama is constantly pilloried for. But he was absolutely right.
Speaker 1: It's the audacity of hope. It's one of the greatest
Speaker 1: things humans do. But I think in this case the
Speaker 1: hope is supported by some data. We still fight, but
Speaker 1: we fight differently and the impact of the fighting, as
Speaker 1: horrific as it is, you just can't compare the casualties
Speaker 1: in Iraq to the American Civil War. You can't or
Speaker 1: the suffering of those people. I don't think it's gonna
Speaker 1: happen in our lifetime or our children's lifetime, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Personally, I would not be surprised. The meat
Speaker 1: the tame the past of American meat diet by the
Speaker 1: time of the war, and for example, there is a
Speaker 1: variation of Welsh harshmeat time, which may be prepared in
Speaker 1: the following month like extra life boxes. And then that
Speaker 1: they had a dried biscuit, they had a little package
Speaker 1: of three or four cigarettes or something like. It was
Speaker 1: a big opportunity for the tobacco industry because they ended
Speaker 1: up sending samples and a lot of the different masses
Speaker 1: had four cigarettes Morning went at the Figar makes Water.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to service Veteran stories of hunger and war
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio. I'm Jacklin repos O What soldiers
Speaker 1: were eating. It's sort of like each war affects the
Speaker 1: one that follows it. That's Anastasia Mark stays. I'll say though,
Speaker 1: I'm the author of Combat Ready Kitchen, How the US
Speaker 1: Military Shapes the way you eat. Anastasia's book dives deep
Speaker 1: into military food innovation, covering how soldiers ate from the
Speaker 1: first standing Sumerian armies up through how our troops are eating.
Speaker 1: M R. E. S feels ready to eat today like Mike,
Speaker 1: she said, Placing our veterans stories firmly within history means
Speaker 1: remember bring that military innovation is like a game of
Speaker 1: leap frog. You jump ahead only to become the hurdle
Speaker 1: for those coming up behind you. There was a brief
Speaker 1: but disastrous period during the Spanish American War in the
Speaker 1: very late nineteenth century where the US military tried to
Speaker 1: provide canned meat rations. Those canned meat rations ended up spoiling,
Speaker 1: and it created this huge debacle where the military is
Speaker 1: basically accused of unintentionally poisoning troops. After that, bad experience,
Speaker 1: they pulled back on the canned meat. So in World
Speaker 1: War One they did use the canning technology, but what
Speaker 1: they put inside it was essentially traditional military rations throughout
Speaker 1: not just the last hundred years but millennia. They were
Speaker 1: dried preserved foods, hard dried biscuits that had like other
Speaker 1: ingredients sometimes added for nutrition, dried meat products, and chocolate.
Speaker 1: That was called the iron ration, and then moved to
Speaker 1: something called the trench ration, where they introduced something that
Speaker 1: was a little wetter in terms of the meat product,
Speaker 1: but it was still just basically a clump of meat
Speaker 1: in a camp. And then they ended up with something
Speaker 1: called the reserve ration, so that would have been taking
Speaker 1: you up to World War two. In nine, as Anastasia
Speaker 1: explains in her book, three staff and a sleepy Chicago
Speaker 1: office started to play around with military cuisine. They didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about food science. They started with just a
Speaker 1: couple of pots and pans and a budget of only
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty dollars. But for the first time
Speaker 1: in history, the U. S. Army Subsistence School at the
Speaker 1: Chicago depot of the Quartermaster Corps had made space for
Speaker 1: a few guys to just play around with what military
Speaker 1: food could be. So in World War Two you end
Speaker 1: up having what I like to think of as being
Speaker 1: the first modern fashion, and that you can eat it
Speaker 1: out of hand or heat it, and it's actually a meal.
Speaker 1: This famous sea rat was basically a stew, and the
Speaker 1: idea was as plain as let's try and get something
Speaker 1: that looks a little bit more like dinner in the camp.
Speaker 1: So that would be meat and vegetables, potatoes, I think
Speaker 1: of frank and beans. So it was pretty heavy on
Speaker 1: the meat and starch. And if not frozen, we will
Speaker 1: get from the unfrozen canned dates by the barrel road. Cornd.
Speaker 1: I could say this follow it like food does really
Speaker 1: lovely at that beginning, like munth that's awful, Oh taste terrible.
Speaker 1: I never want to eat mutton. I get. That actually
Speaker 1: intrigued me because it was the first time I had
Speaker 1: heard that mutton was used to. Certainly spam and corn
Speaker 1: beef were, and I can understand them getting sick of it.
Speaker 1: We've heard that the sea rations did improve during the
Speaker 1: latter years of the war. Finally play Hamburgs and make
Speaker 1: the other care and they started mixing towards the art.
Speaker 1: But this still wasn't the home canning of the Great
Speaker 1: Depression years or civilians victory gardens. Wartime logistics meant the
Speaker 1: military had to prioritize differently. Items were chosen for the
Speaker 1: same reason throughout history. Are they portable? Are they durable?
Speaker 1: Are they long lasting and safe and nourishing? And then
Speaker 1: coming up you know a close fourth or fifth do
Speaker 1: people like to eat them? So these two guys and
Speaker 1: their assistant invented the basic sea rational idea. Plus helped
Speaker 1: with the intentionally uninspiring nutritional chocolate d bar we heard
Speaker 1: about from D. D. Army veteran John Vastrica. What was
Speaker 1: the biggest problem facing these budding food nerds. The things
Speaker 1: that they had invented when they ramped up production and
Speaker 1: shipped them around the world did not fare very well
Speaker 1: because really they didn't have mastery of the science of
Speaker 1: the food or the packaging. The Roosevelt Institute points out
Speaker 1: that in June of ninety nine, the roughly one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand man U s Army ranked nineteenth in
Speaker 1: the world, smaller than Portugals. This makes me laugh because
Speaker 1: half of my family's from Portugal, and I can feel
Speaker 1: in my bones how small that country is. By comparison,
Speaker 1: by the end of nineteen forty two, there were almost
Speaker 1: three million men in the army alone. By v J
Speaker 1: Day in ninety five, there were over twelve million active
Speaker 1: military personnel between branches one hundred and eighty thousand, twelve million.
Speaker 1: Imagine your office manager feeding a company scaling up that quickly.
Speaker 1: We will tell all that what we saw were raising.
Speaker 1: If they were actually bugs, then the flower that came
Speaker 1: over seas to us. Now all those k rations that
Speaker 1: I got from the say they were so quinn with
Speaker 1: am I had to throw them away, or I was
Speaker 1: with no food except the d bar orange maar melade.
Speaker 1: It was bitter in August wash so bad. You used
Speaker 1: to take the bad out and cut the candle and
Speaker 1: pour it on the ground all around where we're gonna eat.
Speaker 1: They swarmed her there and leave us all. And I
Speaker 1: still can't eat it to this day. The cans in
Speaker 1: some cases would rust and fall apart, the labels would
Speaker 1: fall off in local conditions, the food would heat up
Speaker 1: and spoil inside. Not spoil in the sense of bacterial contamination,
Speaker 1: but something that happens just with age with food and
Speaker 1: then paper packaging throughout world War two was cellophane, which
Speaker 1: is based on cellulose, which is a plant sugar. Like
Speaker 1: all plants, it loves water and so it's not a
Speaker 1: water barrier. And that meant anything that had been wrapped
Speaker 1: in cellophane would get soggy. The military head powdered eggs,
Speaker 1: and I hated those powdered eggs. I didn't smoke cigarettes,
Speaker 1: so I would take my cigarettes and trade them to
Speaker 1: the Italians for eggs. They took me down the hill
Speaker 1: in the restaurant and they bought me a breakfast meal
Speaker 1: and they told me it wasn't powdered eggs, it was
Speaker 1: real legs. So that's the first time I had real eggs.
Speaker 1: When I was in England. Got to talking to her
Speaker 1: and she could make a darn good breaference. Then force
Speaker 1: like an omel or something like that. What a difference.
Speaker 1: We would get a ship roll coming in, maybe some
Speaker 1: eggs or whatever. It was a big deal. Providing rations
Speaker 1: two millions of soldiers took up an incredible amount of
Speaker 1: space on ships, so they would try to minimize the
Speaker 1: space and the weight of the food. Plants are water
Speaker 1: and animals are seventy percent water. One way to do
Speaker 1: that is to remove most of the water to dehydrate
Speaker 1: the food. So it wasn't only eggs, milk and cheese,
Speaker 1: and from that we have to think for cheese powder.
Speaker 1: Now eggs are really technically difficult to preserve, and they
Speaker 1: still don't do a good job of it. It has
Speaker 1: fat in it, and fat goes rantid over time because
Speaker 1: of a chemical reaction. And then of course I would say,
Speaker 1: eggs just have this really special combination of textures when
Speaker 1: they're fresh that's very hard to replicate with a powdered substitute.
Speaker 1: For all those reasons, the powdered eggs just have never
Speaker 1: really been that great. And even now they have prepared
Speaker 1: eggs in the m R, but they just don't end
Speaker 1: up being favorites among men and women either. So dehydrated
Speaker 1: eggs haven't gotten much better. But one of the idea
Speaker 1: sparks for this podcast was hearing both in a Rock
Speaker 1: War Army veteran and my World War Two Army veteran
Speaker 1: grandfather talking about doctoring up the powdered coffee that came
Speaker 1: in their field rations. In the case of the Iraqi
Speaker 1: Captain powdered coco too. Have they not improved either. During
Speaker 1: World War Two, all these powdered items were mostly just dehydrated.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have been able to get that goo to
Speaker 1: Roman taste. We've gotten better at the hydrating things and
Speaker 1: better at preserving different elements of the food. Nowadays, they
Speaker 1: really perfected the art of freeze dehydrated beverages. They have
Speaker 1: these things called micro encapsulation, where they encapsulate the fact
Speaker 1: that would go rancid with maybe a protein, so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't go rancid. And in the case of coffee,
Speaker 1: they actually are able to encapsulate the volatile oil that
Speaker 1: makes coffee smell good and taste good inside those little crystals.
Speaker 1: Taking a final broad historical perspective, can we pinpoint what
Speaker 1: changed the most about these rations in a way that
Speaker 1: made a significant difference to the millions of individual humans
Speaker 1: eating them at the time. The impact on the ration
Speaker 1: itself over the course of the war, it would have
Speaker 1: been fairly minimal. They have more to do with the
Speaker 1: can than the food. They were understanding how food deteriorated better,
Speaker 1: which allowed them to figure out how to keep it
Speaker 1: from doing that. But they also developed slightly thicker cans,
Speaker 1: a latex lining for cans rather than an enamel one
Speaker 1: that they had done using sort of a wax overlay
Speaker 1: on top of some of the packagings of that water
Speaker 1: couldn't penetrate it. The really big impact was afterwards, in
Speaker 1: one there was a sudden realization that they needed to
Speaker 1: drastically improve the rations. They took that little laboratory and
Speaker 1: they infused it with money and expertise, and this is
Speaker 1: really what is the big bang moment of processed food. So,
Speaker 1: like Mike said about combat, it seems that not much
Speaker 1: changed during the war for those who served, but the
Speaker 1: number of those who did made a huge impact on
Speaker 1: the experience of service for those coming after them. And
Speaker 1: as we move into the Korean War and the Cold
Speaker 1: War and Vietnam, we'll hear about things like they wanted
Speaker 1: to use plastic, one of the new materials in large
Speaker 1: part developed by the military joint world or to hydration
Speaker 1: to preserve food that was used to do the famous
Speaker 1: space ice cream that astronauts microwave dehydration, which uses microwave
Speaker 1: to remove the water molecule. You end up with like
Speaker 1: a little mini banana. That can one more thing before
Speaker 1: we close out. The Navy had the best food. Of
Speaker 1: all branches, we did not hear another branch get nominated
Speaker 1: once for this award. Obviously, having electricity and running water
Speaker 1: moving from place to place so you can literally make
Speaker 1: food helps, but Anastasia offered another reason. I think anyone
Speaker 1: who loves to cook can tap into the kitchen onboard
Speaker 1: a ship or a submarine is the heart of the
Speaker 1: whole endeavor there, and it becomes something that is very
Speaker 1: important for morale. So there's almost a contest where the
Speaker 1: cooks are trying to outdo each other and preparing delicious food,
Speaker 1: including a tradition of making elaborate cakes to your people
Speaker 1: up and so an extra nod to those working hard
Speaker 1: in kitchens from s to Shining Sea and Woodbine, we
Speaker 1: took a lot of pride and how we did the food,
Speaker 1: how we presented the food. We were proud of our
Speaker 1: contribution to what we were going. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: in this our first season. Subscribe to Service on your
Speaker 1: favorite platform to catch up on episodes you might have missed,
Speaker 1: get special extra episodes as we dropped them between seasons,
Speaker 1: and for updates on one our Korean War season debuts.
Speaker 1: And thanks for dropping a review while you're there. And
Speaker 1: don't forget. You can find more about this episode and
Speaker 1: every episode we've aired at service podcast dot org, plus
Speaker 1: extra clips and nerdy food history stuff on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 1: We're at Service Podcast. You can drop a note will
Speaker 1: pass on to our guests at our web page too.
Speaker 1: Service as a production from My Heart Radio with Misty
Speaker 1: Bladiger as my assisting producer, Gabrielle Collins as our supervising producer,
Speaker 1: and Christopher Hasiotis as our executive producer. I produced this
Speaker 1: episode with help from Boston I Heart producer Eric Collins.
Speaker 1: And thank you to all the artists and engineers who
Speaker 1: have added creativity and skill to our first season. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, and thank you to those serving and
Speaker 1: those who have served