WEBVTT - So, What Did World War II Change, Really? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.400 This episode re enacts scenes of war and includes gunfire. 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:10.600 Listener discretion advised who are tuning into Service Johnny, the 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.640 strict private first class that are in stories of hunger 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:18.319 and war. They joined a service Women Pearl Harbor Member 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:22.160 Pearl Harbor, a production from My Heart Radio. We used 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.000 to just give these people the food from our miss kits. 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.040 You ain't what you could get, and be thankful for 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:36.160 what you were getting. I'm your host, Jacqueline Raposo, Men 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:39.160 and women of the United States. On this day, more 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:43.839 than sixteen million young Americans are surviving. The three hundred 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:48.959 year old American customer of the Musland has it all 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.640 times called for the fortitude of women. Meanwhile, the British 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.320 government has begun to racition food and Prime Minister Chamber 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.800 on Monday from the Thailand and from our Nigi Empa 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:06.920 Mount and the struggle single handed until we went joined 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.759 by the minted rate might of set Raka and later 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:15.160 by the overwhelming power and regales of the United States 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:22.319 of America. We must be the great awesenal of democracy. 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.000 In the late nineteen thirties, kids going to school, or 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:31.440 working their family farms, or just struggling to find food 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.959 outlasted the Great Depression, only to find themselves barreling into 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:40.840 what would become the deadliest conflict in human history. We've 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:43.840 moved through twelve of their individual war and food stories 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:47.400 this season, but honestly, I still find it a little 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.480 hard to connect their intimate experiences with what history books 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.880 tell us of this overwhelmingly big World War two picture. 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.560 And so in our final episode this season, we're going 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.520 to compile all some crossovers from our veterans for two 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.120 guests who can help us better make sense of things. 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:08.560 What changed the most when it comes to combat and puisine. 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:11.440 What part did these young men and women play in 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.399 moving things forward? And where can we most find ourselves 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:21.760 in their stories. It's a completely different type of fighting 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.880 or having to go a tree to tree to root 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.720 out the Germans. He had to look for the uniform, 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.880 what the helmet looked like. Not only that they had 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:35.680 the anti air thrasher Pickadilly circus. That was a code 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.600 name on the landing kraft. You were supposed to stop 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:44.680 a coordinates. Who's on the coordinate the infantry of the Marines. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.639 You don't want to hit them, you want head of them. 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:52.720 So with them there are artillery observers on the front 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:55.720 lines listening to the cat with These men are describing 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:59.280 as what we call Class Witsyan war. This is my coal. 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.720 It did three tours in Iraq to as a private 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.760 contractor and a third as a paramilitary civilian with the 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:09.480 Defense Intelligence Agency while he was also a Coast Guard officer. 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.519 He's also authored many fantasy books and two history books 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:17.760 on ancient combat while simultaneously working in law enforcement and 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:22.160 private intelligence. He doesn't specialize in World War two history, 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.520 but he has a strong sense of the community our 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.079 veterans are a part of, plus a jacked up analytical mind. 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.760 Class Witsian war is traditional warfare as we know it 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.360 from the Peace of Westphalia up until by argue it's with. 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.440 But klass Witzian warfare is also known as trinitarian warfare, 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:42.480 and trinitarian warfare is there's three things you do to 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:47.520 win a war. You destroy your enemy's army, You occupy 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.360 his territory. Can you break the will of the military 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:53.960 infrastructure to carry on the contest? Right? That is how 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.080 wars have been thought. These are wars of maneuver where 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.440 military units at the Regimental Battalion Company level are maneuvering 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.560 against one another, we're charging, retreating in set piece battles, 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.360 having fos forward, observers calling in fire. None of that 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:09.600 has changed. And was that the same in World War One? 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:11.640 As well as that a strategy the same. I think 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:13.600 they might have had to use signal flags and marker flags, 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:15.320 as matter of fact, I'm almost sure they did, but 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:17.840 the concepts were still basically the same. My point is 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.239 is that there isn't that big a difference technologically between 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:23.680 what these men were experiencing what's going on now. B 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.479 M one is still my favorite long gun. It's the 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:28.400 same and one that these guys were using, but it's 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:30.799 just got fiberglasses that of would that carried. The nineteen 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.440 eleven it's my favorite pistol. It's called the nineteen eleven 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:39.679 because it's from nineteen eleven eight. It is the gun 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:42.200 that the Germans had, the best gun of the whole war. 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.920 All of a sudden, right over my head that the 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:50.840 German burp gun, our submachine gun got. We've never seen 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.479 it burp gun before. I said, I want to go 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.200 with the p key votes so we could go fast 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.640 and they could not go fair. The English, the first 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:01.560 people to in radar. They were able to keep the 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.280 fighter planes on the ground until the German planes got 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.479 close enough than the fighter planes took off, and they 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:08.679 had full fuel tanks. Because it was about le Bretton 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:14.080 wanted the fighter a machine gun, spring even more bullets, 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:18.880 about zooming faster, a plane navigating more precisely, these things 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.760 seemed to make a huge difference for the bodies in 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:26.680 the fight. Our being this great arsenal of democracy. Does 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.120 technology really not make a difference on a greater scale? 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.279 The answer is more complicated. It's rather the interplay of 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.320 technology and doctrine, or the interplay of technology and tactics. 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.359 I'll give you a perfect case in point. We'll go 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.800 all the way back to the American Civil War. There's 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.080 a famous truism in military theory that we are always 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.880 fighting the last war, and we mean that negatively right. 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:54.680 Napoleonic wars, which was the main experience that most generals 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.960 in the American Civil War had, were wars fought largely 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.640 with smooth bore muskets. A smooth bore musket means that 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.039 the barrel of the musket does not have rifling, which 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:05.719 is to say that I could be aiming straight ahead 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.160 of me, and when I pulled that trigger, that ball 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:10.080 could go at a forty five degree angle off to 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:11.800 the right. It's got nothing to do with what I'm 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:14.640 aiming at. By the time the American Civil War was fought, 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.120 rifling was standard. Your aiming at that's where your bullet's 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.599 gonna go. But you're still using napoleonic tactics designed to 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:26.000 deal with these incredibly inaccurate musket's people lining up present 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.360 are and then shooting into a mass. But now you're 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.360 doing it with an accurate weapon. So the casualties were extreme, 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.200 and it took way too long for the tactical thinking 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:40.919 to match the shift in technology. Trench warfare in the 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.840 First World War is another great example. The crew served 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:49.080 tripod fired machine gun was new tech. Those tactics of 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:51.800 trench warfare of going over the top and racing into 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.400 the enemy's trenches, going into the teeth of that fire. 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.400 Those tactics were designed before you were facing two guys 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:00.240 with a tripod mounta machine go could take out a 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.640 tire company just sitting there going left and right. There's 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.839 that amazing scene in the beginning of saving Private Ryan, 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.440 or the moment that Higgins boats Gangway drops and then 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.080 he says, God, the imn beviated dropped the f and 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.720 rim and I had no choice. I dropped the rip 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:22.200 and then the scene came into the boat and about 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:28.040 fourteen guys immediately were killed. I'm sure that that occurred, 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:32.280 that doctrine did not shift quickly enough to adapt to 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:36.200 advances in technology, and that that cost lives in extreme cases. 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.080 Truman found out that the invasion of Jap band would 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:48.640 have been wished twice the size of Normandy. So this 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:57.040 is when President Drumman says, dropped two bombs. The Japanese 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.360 have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:02.760 foresee what it was. Let's talk about what we mean 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.960 when we say the deadliest conflict in human history. The 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.840 United States use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima killed 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:15.000 eighty thou people instantly. Three days later, forty more were 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.680 killed by a second bomb on Nagasaki. Imagine how many 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.120 more were affected by nuclear fallout. There's the butta On 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.600 death March that killed twenty thousand, the one point one 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:31.080 million prisoners murdered in Auschwitz alone. Gross estimates of worldwide 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.880 World War two casualties are counted at fifteen million battle deaths, 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:39.760 twenty five million battle wounds, and forty five million civilian deaths. 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:44.160 But those are really gross estimates because reports vary so widely. 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.120 Field strategy might not have changed during or because of 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:53.199 this war. But yes, both technology and doctrine worked against 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:57.160 human bodies and cost human lives, and that leads us 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:00.480 to the biggest difference between this war and all others. 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:14.439 December seventh, nineteen one, a date which will live in infamy. 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.280 The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.840 by label and their courses of the Empire of Japan. 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.360 Three of my classmates and myself, we're going to Long 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:32.720 Beach unless my brother and two of his friends joined 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:36.640 the navy. They were so in demand of nurses that 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:39.720 I said to nursing my girlfriend and I said, let's 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.560 go join the army, and we did. My mother had 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.040 a very hard time. She had three sons and we 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:48.800 roll in combat. I had seven older brothers. They all 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.480 served but two. She had seven sons and they were 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.000 all in the service. Keene had a lot of kids 0:09:55.040 --> 0:10:00.240 who went in. Ten million, twenty thousand, nine and nine 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.640 three that's how many men were inducted into the armed 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.080 forces via the draft. Between nineteen forty and ninety six, 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:11.400 another six million would voluntarily join up plus three and 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.920 fifty thousand women and millions of others, building ships and 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:17.880 planes and tanks and guns as fast as they could. 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:37.640 This was a massive war. Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.880 our way of life, our very freedom came under attack 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:48.040 in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. Not 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:50.920 eleven I was galvanized. I think like so many other 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:52.760 people in the United States, I wanted to get in 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:54.840 the fight, and I wanted to get in the fight quickly. 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.880 But Not eleven failed to galvanize the rush to recruiting stations. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:02.200 We might presume it did it. Military personnel numbers grew 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:04.800 by less than thirty thousand between two thousand and one 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.520 and two and two, and they've lingered at a total 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.240 of less than point five percent of our population over 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:14.880 the last decade. What generation warfare is what a lot 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:19.280 of people call coin counterinsurgency warfare, the notion that mau 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:22.800 Ze Tongue really revolutionized in his famous book Guerilla Warfare. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.320 Do you have hyperpowers at this part? You're not going 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:27.280 to defeat the United States Army. No one is going 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.400 to defeat the United States Army in a set piece battle, 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:33.079 even in No. One, not China, not Russia, no One 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:35.040 in a field battle. There's no point in even trying. 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:39.520 We have superior technology, we have superior training. We have 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.440 not necessarily more numbers, but the right numbers, the infrastructure 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.120 that's required. What Mao hit on is that the way 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.240 you beat a hyperpower you have one goal in class. 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.040 What's the and trinitarian warfare. Let's break their will to fight, 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:56.480 but class what's is talking about their military? What Mau pioneered, 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.520 you break the will of the populace to carry on 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:05.440 the con test. How do you feel like World War 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:09.440 Two shifted a sense of patriotism in the militaria? Oh 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:12.520 my gosh, there's so many things that are different. The 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.040 first and most obvious is that World War two is 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.600 an existential crisis, not just for the United States but 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.080 for the world. The first Great air raid on Paris, 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:25.599 which took place today, evidently had two objectives. It is 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.160 reported this morning that German bombers and fighting claims are 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:37.240 again over southeast British coastal towers by Brown. But you're 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.679 on the deed and ocean. We're we're growing country and 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.520 growing great in the air. The stark contrasts between the 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.440 mission of the access Powers and the mission of the 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:52.800 Allied powers. No war sense has had that existential states 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:56.360 Vietnam or Korea for the United States, like, we lost, 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.959 So what what is the impact on people living in 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.720 the United States? Not my There's another thing. It's really interesting. 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:05.680 If you google this, you can find videos made during 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.320 World War Two teaching service members how to behave in 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:13.160 a British public away. And incidentally, the beer isn't cold 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.000 in England. No, they don't like it cold and they 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.440 have many ice So if you like beer, you better 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.920 like it warm. What's that add difference between bitter and mild. 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.360 The video keeps synthasizing you're in the uniforming the army, 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.840 don't do these things, don't start a fight, don't get drunk. 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.040 But with the advent of cell phone technology, anytime you 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.600 screw up in uniform, that's going on Facebook. The military 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.920 is reacted to that. So we hide our military. Now 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.400 we take those uniforms off. You get in trouble if 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:42.440 you're in uniform. No one ever told me that this 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:44.439 was the motive, But the general spirence I got was 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:46.400 they were afraid someone would attack me or hurt me, 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.560 which is not true. And they were afraid I would 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.839 do something that would bring discredit on the United States 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:54.199 military and it will be caught on a cell phone 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.120 and put on Facebook and put on other social media. 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.160 That culture of patriotism, it really did go out. And 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:02.439 that's how to real cost In the United States. We 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.280 are citizen soldiers, citizens sailors. I always say this when 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.079 I talk about the military. We are you and you 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:13.120 are us. We are part of the community. We are 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:15.920 not separate from it. That's one of the great strengths 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:21.800 of the American military. We'll hear more from Mike incoming 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.520 seasons as we continue to observe shifting warfare. But in 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.880 studying World War Two alone, the only big picture I 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:33.120 can see our humans slaughtering other humans, a very masculine 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.720 way of pillaging and ruling the world. This is an 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:41.480 ongoing conversation, but after centuries of warfare, I can't begin 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:47.400 to envision a peaceful world in the end. I am 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.560 hoping here, and that really is something that humans have 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.000 a unique capacity to do. Hope, because without hope. Why 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.400 do anything right? Then you're just completely nihilist. This is 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.400 what Obama is constantly pilloried for. But he was absolutely right. 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.280 It's the audacity of hope. It's one of the greatest 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.480 things humans do. But I think in this case the 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:11.200 hope is supported by some data. We still fight, but 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:14.920 we fight differently and the impact of the fighting, as 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.400 horrific as it is, you just can't compare the casualties 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:21.720 in Iraq to the American Civil War. You can't or 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:24.880 the suffering of those people. I don't think it's gonna 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:26.760 happen in our lifetime or our children's lifetime, but it's 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:48.240 gonna happen. Personally, I would not be surprised. The meat 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.760 the tame the past of American meat diet by the 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:54.560 time of the war, and for example, there is a 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:58.480 variation of Welsh harshmeat time, which may be prepared in 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:02.480 the following month like extra life boxes. And then that 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:04.840 they had a dried biscuit, they had a little package 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.880 of three or four cigarettes or something like. It was 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:11.520 a big opportunity for the tobacco industry because they ended 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:13.960 up sending samples and a lot of the different masses 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:21.720 had four cigarettes Morning went at the Figar makes Water. 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.360 Welcome back to service Veteran stories of hunger and war 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:31.160 from my Heart Radio. I'm Jacklin repos O What soldiers 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.800 were eating. It's sort of like each war affects the 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.080 one that follows it. That's Anastasia Mark stays. I'll say though, 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:40.720 I'm the author of Combat Ready Kitchen, How the US 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:44.960 Military Shapes the way you eat. Anastasia's book dives deep 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.720 into military food innovation, covering how soldiers ate from the 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.240 first standing Sumerian armies up through how our troops are eating. 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.760 M R. E. S feels ready to eat today like Mike, 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:59.640 she said, Placing our veterans stories firmly within history means 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.600 remember bring that military innovation is like a game of 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.919 leap frog. You jump ahead only to become the hurdle 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.960 for those coming up behind you. There was a brief 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:13.679 but disastrous period during the Spanish American War in the 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:18.760 very late nineteenth century where the US military tried to 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:25.439 provide canned meat rations. Those canned meat rations ended up spoiling, 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:29.080 and it created this huge debacle where the military is 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:35.200 basically accused of unintentionally poisoning troops. After that, bad experience, 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:38.439 they pulled back on the canned meat. So in World 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:43.000 War One they did use the canning technology, but what 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:49.480 they put inside it was essentially traditional military rations throughout 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.840 not just the last hundred years but millennia. They were 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:57.480 dried preserved foods, hard dried biscuits that had like other 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:02.560 ingredients sometimes added for nutrition, dried meat products, and chocolate. 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:06.119 That was called the iron ration, and then moved to 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.000 something called the trench ration, where they introduced something that 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:11.680 was a little wetter in terms of the meat product, 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:13.920 but it was still just basically a clump of meat 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.520 in a camp. And then they ended up with something 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.359 called the reserve ration, so that would have been taking 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:25.080 you up to World War two. In nine, as Anastasia 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.360 explains in her book, three staff and a sleepy Chicago 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:32.000 office started to play around with military cuisine. They didn't 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.280 know anything about food science. They started with just a 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.240 couple of pots and pans and a budget of only 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.120 seven hundred and fifty dollars. But for the first time 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.040 in history, the U. S. Army Subsistence School at the 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.560 Chicago depot of the Quartermaster Corps had made space for 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:51.440 a few guys to just play around with what military 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:56.080 food could be. So in World War Two you end 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:58.720 up having what I like to think of as being 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.919 the first modern fashion, and that you can eat it 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:04.600 out of hand or heat it, and it's actually a meal. 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:09.439 This famous sea rat was basically a stew, and the 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.440 idea was as plain as let's try and get something 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:15.159 that looks a little bit more like dinner in the camp. 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:19.840 So that would be meat and vegetables, potatoes, I think 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.240 of frank and beans. So it was pretty heavy on 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.880 the meat and starch. And if not frozen, we will 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:33.040 get from the unfrozen canned dates by the barrel road. Cornd. 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.600 I could say this follow it like food does really 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:42.200 lovely at that beginning, like munth that's awful, Oh taste terrible. 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.200 I never want to eat mutton. I get. That actually 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:47.680 intrigued me because it was the first time I had 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.840 heard that mutton was used to. Certainly spam and corn 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:53.280 beef were, and I can understand them getting sick of it. 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:56.320 We've heard that the sea rations did improve during the 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.760 latter years of the war. Finally play Hamburgs and make 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:03.560 the other care and they started mixing towards the art. 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.520 But this still wasn't the home canning of the Great 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:11.480 Depression years or civilians victory gardens. Wartime logistics meant the 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:17.919 military had to prioritize differently. Items were chosen for the 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:22.840 same reason throughout history. Are they portable? Are they durable? 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:27.080 Are they long lasting and safe and nourishing? And then 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:29.760 coming up you know a close fourth or fifth do 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.600 people like to eat them? So these two guys and 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.200 their assistant invented the basic sea rational idea. Plus helped 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.120 with the intentionally uninspiring nutritional chocolate d bar we heard 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:43.919 about from D. D. Army veteran John Vastrica. What was 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:48.280 the biggest problem facing these budding food nerds. The things 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.600 that they had invented when they ramped up production and 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:55.080 shipped them around the world did not fare very well 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.240 because really they didn't have mastery of the science of 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:04.600 the food or the packaging. The Roosevelt Institute points out 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.760 that in June of ninety nine, the roughly one hundred 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.639 and eighty thousand man U s Army ranked nineteenth in 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.399 the world, smaller than Portugals. This makes me laugh because 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:16.920 half of my family's from Portugal, and I can feel 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.880 in my bones how small that country is. By comparison, 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.040 by the end of nineteen forty two, there were almost 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.760 three million men in the army alone. By v J 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:30.880 Day in ninety five, there were over twelve million active 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:35.920 military personnel between branches one hundred and eighty thousand, twelve million. 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:40.520 Imagine your office manager feeding a company scaling up that quickly. 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:44.520 We will tell all that what we saw were raising. 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.200 If they were actually bugs, then the flower that came 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:51.359 over seas to us. Now all those k rations that 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:53.560 I got from the say they were so quinn with 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:55.679 am I had to throw them away, or I was 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.480 with no food except the d bar orange maar melade. 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:02.560 It was bitter in August wash so bad. You used 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:04.800 to take the bad out and cut the candle and 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.520 pour it on the ground all around where we're gonna eat. 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.320 They swarmed her there and leave us all. And I 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.480 still can't eat it to this day. The cans in 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:19.000 some cases would rust and fall apart, the labels would 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.760 fall off in local conditions, the food would heat up 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.720 and spoil inside. Not spoil in the sense of bacterial contamination, 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:29.840 but something that happens just with age with food and 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:34.359 then paper packaging throughout world War two was cellophane, which 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:38.719 is based on cellulose, which is a plant sugar. Like 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:41.760 all plants, it loves water and so it's not a 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:44.679 water barrier. And that meant anything that had been wrapped 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:51.920 in cellophane would get soggy. The military head powdered eggs, 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:55.600 and I hated those powdered eggs. I didn't smoke cigarettes, 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:57.639 so I would take my cigarettes and trade them to 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.880 the Italians for eggs. They took me down the hill 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:03.360 in the restaurant and they bought me a breakfast meal 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.280 and they told me it wasn't powdered eggs, it was 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.480 real legs. So that's the first time I had real eggs. 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.040 When I was in England. Got to talking to her 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:14.480 and she could make a darn good breaference. Then force 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:17.160 like an omel or something like that. What a difference. 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:20.840 We would get a ship roll coming in, maybe some 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:26.400 eggs or whatever. It was a big deal. Providing rations 0:23:26.560 --> 0:23:31.480 two millions of soldiers took up an incredible amount of 0:23:31.520 --> 0:23:35.159 space on ships, so they would try to minimize the 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:39.320 space and the weight of the food. Plants are water 0:23:39.560 --> 0:23:43.520 and animals are seventy percent water. One way to do 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:47.040 that is to remove most of the water to dehydrate 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:51.080 the food. So it wasn't only eggs, milk and cheese, 0:23:51.200 --> 0:23:53.600 and from that we have to think for cheese powder. 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:58.440 Now eggs are really technically difficult to preserve, and they 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:00.840 still don't do a good job of it. It has 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:04.920 fat in it, and fat goes rantid over time because 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:07.840 of a chemical reaction. And then of course I would say, 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:12.240 eggs just have this really special combination of textures when 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:16.200 they're fresh that's very hard to replicate with a powdered substitute. 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:19.960 For all those reasons, the powdered eggs just have never 0:24:20.000 --> 0:24:23.640 really been that great. And even now they have prepared 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:25.879 eggs in the m R, but they just don't end 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:31.320 up being favorites among men and women either. So dehydrated 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:34.520 eggs haven't gotten much better. But one of the idea 0:24:34.600 --> 0:24:37.120 sparks for this podcast was hearing both in a Rock 0:24:37.200 --> 0:24:40.159 War Army veteran and my World War Two Army veteran 0:24:40.200 --> 0:24:43.400 grandfather talking about doctoring up the powdered coffee that came 0:24:43.400 --> 0:24:45.760 in their field rations. In the case of the Iraqi 0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:51.800 Captain powdered coco too. Have they not improved either. During 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:56.960 World War Two, all these powdered items were mostly just dehydrated. 0:24:57.080 --> 0:24:58.840 They wouldn't have been able to get that goo to 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:02.600 Roman taste. We've gotten better at the hydrating things and 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:07.720