I woke up.
It was Christmas Day, another unspectacular one of memory. They had at some point lost their luster. But dead guys, bombed-out buildings, the ever-present threat of attack or sniper, and the decaying, dead horse in the courtyard couldn't quell the spirit.
The hand shaking me was a little too frantic, a little too Davidson-wake-the-fuck-up-and-do-it-now for this to be just another day at Puente Del Rey. Cpl. Mike Stone shook me. He leaned close to my face sarcastically and whispered, "merry fucking Christmas, Davidson."
It was 4 am; we had been rotating guard duty- two awake, one sleeping. Propaganda had suggested an attack was coming Christmas Eve or day, and it hadn't come during the night. I had refused to wake, and Stone wasn't dealing well with that.
I sat up, mumbled something about a cigarette and tightened my helmet straps.
A breeze off the gulf wrestled in tree branches; critters crawled through the grass beneath them. In the distance, someone was whispering. What little nightfall had done to relieve us from the Panamanian heat, tension had undone.
Darkness consumed everything. Even after sleeping, I couldn't see my hands. A drink of water, a splash on the face, I spun to stare blankly at the horizon. No sign of light. This was our fifth morning, fourth in Panamá City's suburbs.
We kept hearing and seeing things. Stone wore the night vision goggles, scanning 360 degrees. Pvt. Stewart and I kept unfocused eyes on the perimeter, looking for any sign of movement.
Later, Stone and I stood guard at the barrier on Via Cinquentario while Christmas services were held. They sent us back at noon. Stone went and crossed himself –or whatever it is they do in rural, southern Indiana –then we ate our MRE Christmas dinner.
While we ate, somebody took a run at the barrier. When he refused to stop, the gate guards opened fire. A rooftop .50 caliber followed suit, and soon the roadside roared a symphony of armament, the buzz of automatic rifle, the symbol crash of shattered glass and twisted metal and the percussive rhythm of the machine gun accented with the pop, pop, pop of imploding tires.
The translator found a rocket launcher in the trunk; apparently, the driver had been coming to turn it in. He must've gotten nervous that we might shoot him. One of the platoon sergeants stole his watch.
When the smell of cordite finally abated, they took Stone and I, attached us to third platoon, and sent us out kicking in doors. We inched up and down Panama Viejo's streets, stopping periodically, eyes constantly sweeping for any sign of aggression.
I turned away from the roadside long enough to make wise-ass comments to Stone when it happened; a man burst out of a building, running toward the guy in front of me. I spun around and dropped to my knees. Even in the screaming, it was possible to hear 35 rifles click their safeties off.
No one fired though. He wore shorts, sandals and a T-shirt depicting Noriega as a pineapple. He was screaming, "Kill him. Kill him," and pointing to the face on his shirt. Pointing toward his own chest. Most of us laughed. But not one lowered a rifle.
After we stood down that night, Stone and I were sent to deliver our status to the command post. The honor was mine. I stepped into the makeshift clerks office to fill the lines on the proper form for food and ammunition for the next couple of days, then left.
In the hallway, Stone was mimicking a game of hot-potato with one of his canteens. An urgent look on his face told me we should be leaving. Behind cover, he lead me to the side of the building and to a boulder jutting out over the gulf.
In the distance, maybe even in Colombia, lights twinkled. The breeze blew stronger here, and soothing waves rolled gently from surf to shore. Stone asked for my canteen cup. He had taken hot water from the command post.
We mixed a thick, sweet hot chocolate using twice the recommended amounts of cocoa, coffee, sugar, creamer, and for good measure, some caramel candies. When it was finished, he commented on how a cigar would taste with it, and took a sip.
"Oh, yeah," he said, reaching into one pocket and then the other. He handed me cookies stolen while I had filled out the requisitions. I had one already stuffed into my mouth when he finished rummaging.
He held up his hand. "I found these too," he whispered, pouring two nips of Jack Daniels into the cocoa. "I had hoped for something from Kentucky, but all they had was this shit."
We sat a while in silence, enjoying the night best we could, staring at stars or wandering in thoughts each his own.
It had been a testament to the mettle of men, not me, being able to find joy in a Christmas Day separated by 5000 miles, and just as many guns, from their families.
The cocoa gone, we stood to leave. Stone slapped my back and shook me like he had that morning, knowing I was not a fan of the holiday. Leaning close to my face, sarcastically, he whispered in a tone that would have better fit an insult, "merry fucking Christmas."
Friday, July 10, 2009
Uninvited Guests: Part 2
They say time sure flies when you’re having fun. No one ever really talks about how it moves when you’re not.
The landing hadn’t cost me anything a few beers and a good nose-picking wouldn’t cure. Now that the easy part was behind me, I dug out my compass and gathered my bearings. The acacia I’d stared at after landing guided me toward the airfield, while light in the distance suggested where Panama City was.
Not quite the triple canopy that most picture when thinking of a jungle area, I was in a small clearing. Many plots of trees had grown randomly above abundant brush, stands of palm, and the ever-present elephant grass. Most towered above me, but the night sky was visible in patches.
Despite the fact that I was involved in a full-scale invasion, that small-arms fire and explosions seemed ceaseless in the distance, and that I could hear the wind passing through the elephant grass and trees, it was eerily quiet around me. I loaded a bullet into the chamber of my 9 mm carefully, aware of the way sound seemed to be carrying; I guided the slide forward to keep quiet. Going forward at a crouch, I lead with the barrel. With each step, leaves on eight-foot stalks of grass gripped my uniform, bending and twisting with my movements. When they released, it sounded to me like ripping paper in an empty room.
About a minute into the grass, I could make out the top of the airfield fence line silhouetted against moonlight. In places, trails cut through the grass, paralleling the fence. I followed them briefly, looking for smaller trails. When found, I’d disappear again. A breeze still kicked through the plant life, making little steps here, a whisper there. It was the metallic scratching of chain links that got my attention.
As I approached the low grass bordering the fence, I slowed, took care to make no noise that I could control. Peeking toward the source of what was now a rattle, I braced myself. My trigger finger had already taken up the slack; it rested a hair’s breadth away from the hammer fall.
About a foot off the ground, a soldier hung from the fence, facing away from me. He would have been lying on the ground, other side of the fence, had the concertina wire atop the fence not caught the lines from his chute and his ruck, which was on my side. I aimed at his the center of his back. “Don’t fucking move.” I said. He jerked to a stop. “Manifold,” I said, improperly offering the challenge.
He hesitated a second, “Who goes there?”
“Davidson,” I said, “I’m going to fucking shoot you. Manifold….”
Jerking a little, he almost shouted his response, “floodlight.” I think the stress of the moment had fogged his head, and he’d been buying time to remember the password. He’d almost paid a price he couldn’t afford, but at his response, I crept forward.
“What the fuck have you gotten into?” I asked.
He didn’t know. He’d spent his time since landing trying to figure a way out of it. His rucksack had come down outside the fence, and his lowering line—the strap from which the aforesaid hangs for landing—had caught the razor wire. His parachute had drifted back into the fence when he’d released his riser. He was just hanging there, one big target.
“Cut my lowering line, will ya?” he said. As I reached for my bayonet, grass rustled behind me. Whirling to plant myself prone behind the soldier’s wayward rucksack, a figure appeared from the grass ten feet away.
“Halt,” I said. This time, it was me who almost shouted. “Who goes there?”
The man in front of me was wearing a helmet I’d not seen before and carrying a grease gun, which looked a lot like something German troops carried in WWII. Still partially concealed by the elephant grass, I couldn’t make his outline perfectly, so I aimed for what seemed like it would be center mass.
“Rodriguez,” came the reply. With his response, he’d shifted slightly. I had a clear shot at his chest. His name suggested that he might be a local, but the lack of an accent encouraged me.
“Manifold,” I said, half expecting sudden movement. As he hesitated, I pulled the slack out of the trigger, preparing to fire. Behind me, I heard the bolt from an M-16 push a round into the chamber. It seems dude had managed to free himself and finish removing his rifle from its case, fear, apparently, becoming quite the motivator.
“Floodlight,” Rodriguez responded. Normally, I’d have told him to advance, but the odd weapon and different shape of his helmet had me in quandary.
Then, from behind me, the other soldier growled, “What fucking unit are you with, asshole?” Rodriguez spat out a collection of numbers describing his unit, and when we didn’t respond right away, he continued “3rd of 73rd, I’m a tanker, drive a Sheridan.”
We called him forward. Turns out, he had already donned the helmet he wears in the tank, expecting to find his vehicle before he found random Joes hanging out by the fence. His Kevlar helmet hanged from the back of his rucksack (We both recommended he put it back on). We pulled the fence up—rather than cutting it—to crawl under, and with the hanging guy leading the way and Rodriguez pulling rear guard, we resumed our course.
A few minutes back into the elephant grass, hanging dude put up his hand, stopping both of us. We dropped to our knees instinctively, hearing whispering from ahead. A second later, a black captain, standing six-feet-and-change tall, walked back and surveyed the two of us. He wasn’t carrying a weapon.
At first, I assumed that it had somehow been lost during the drop, but as I looked, I discredited that assumption. He wore almost no camouflage paint, didn’t even have a sidearm that I could see, and his rucksack was too small and dainty to be carrying a combat load (I later asked: he was from division headquarters and had found his way onto the jump by bumping someone who had actually served a purpose on the ground. We would learn, after counting several members of our company as missing in action, that a large collection of paper pushers had done the same so they could get combat jump stars. Rumor has it that they were severely punished and subsequently denied the gold star.).
So the captain fell in with us, walking upright. Quickly, I slowed and waved him up to me. “Sir, you can’t walk upright,” I said. “You make a big target, and any little brown guys hanging out in the grass might see your helmet.” He didn’t listen until, a moment later, I heard Rodriguez say something similar in a much harsher tone, and I clearly heard: “If someone pops you a new asshole in the forehead, we’ll leave your stupid ass here.” It was like a deal had been struck, and Capt. Pogue understood: We won’t tell you how to drive your desk, and you don’t argue when Rodriguez tells you how to unfuck yourself.
Not five minutes later, we arrived at the edge of the runway we were supposed to have landed on. Hanging guy pulled out his night vision, got his bearings and passed them on. I saw the infrared signal for Alpha Company toward the southwest end and knew where to go. Rodriguez had already spotted his place, and we took off, leaving Capt. Pogue to find his own way.
About 100 meters down the runway, I approached Alpha Co.’s marker. A sergeant held it. There was another marker farther down, but it wasn’t mine. “Sergeant,” I said, “anybody here from Charlie?” There wasn’t, so I moved a ways down, dropped my ruck and watched for movement in the grass. For the next few moments, I was Charlie Company.
Our first arrival was a Pennsylvania kid named Bill Clepper, who instantly handed me his weapon, pulled out his poncho and smoked a cigarette. I stuck my head in for a drag and returned to watch. Next, members of the company started filing in rapidly. When Sgt. Husketh arrived with Charlie’s marker, I finally thought to look at my watch.
What seemed like forever had been less than half an hour from the time I’d stepped out the door of the plane. Time didn’t fly. I assume this means I wasn’t having fun.
The landing hadn’t cost me anything a few beers and a good nose-picking wouldn’t cure. Now that the easy part was behind me, I dug out my compass and gathered my bearings. The acacia I’d stared at after landing guided me toward the airfield, while light in the distance suggested where Panama City was.
Not quite the triple canopy that most picture when thinking of a jungle area, I was in a small clearing. Many plots of trees had grown randomly above abundant brush, stands of palm, and the ever-present elephant grass. Most towered above me, but the night sky was visible in patches.
Despite the fact that I was involved in a full-scale invasion, that small-arms fire and explosions seemed ceaseless in the distance, and that I could hear the wind passing through the elephant grass and trees, it was eerily quiet around me. I loaded a bullet into the chamber of my 9 mm carefully, aware of the way sound seemed to be carrying; I guided the slide forward to keep quiet. Going forward at a crouch, I lead with the barrel. With each step, leaves on eight-foot stalks of grass gripped my uniform, bending and twisting with my movements. When they released, it sounded to me like ripping paper in an empty room.
About a minute into the grass, I could make out the top of the airfield fence line silhouetted against moonlight. In places, trails cut through the grass, paralleling the fence. I followed them briefly, looking for smaller trails. When found, I’d disappear again. A breeze still kicked through the plant life, making little steps here, a whisper there. It was the metallic scratching of chain links that got my attention.
As I approached the low grass bordering the fence, I slowed, took care to make no noise that I could control. Peeking toward the source of what was now a rattle, I braced myself. My trigger finger had already taken up the slack; it rested a hair’s breadth away from the hammer fall.
About a foot off the ground, a soldier hung from the fence, facing away from me. He would have been lying on the ground, other side of the fence, had the concertina wire atop the fence not caught the lines from his chute and his ruck, which was on my side. I aimed at his the center of his back. “Don’t fucking move.” I said. He jerked to a stop. “Manifold,” I said, improperly offering the challenge.
He hesitated a second, “Who goes there?”
“Davidson,” I said, “I’m going to fucking shoot you. Manifold….”
Jerking a little, he almost shouted his response, “floodlight.” I think the stress of the moment had fogged his head, and he’d been buying time to remember the password. He’d almost paid a price he couldn’t afford, but at his response, I crept forward.
“What the fuck have you gotten into?” I asked.
He didn’t know. He’d spent his time since landing trying to figure a way out of it. His rucksack had come down outside the fence, and his lowering line—the strap from which the aforesaid hangs for landing—had caught the razor wire. His parachute had drifted back into the fence when he’d released his riser. He was just hanging there, one big target.
“Cut my lowering line, will ya?” he said. As I reached for my bayonet, grass rustled behind me. Whirling to plant myself prone behind the soldier’s wayward rucksack, a figure appeared from the grass ten feet away.
“Halt,” I said. This time, it was me who almost shouted. “Who goes there?”
The man in front of me was wearing a helmet I’d not seen before and carrying a grease gun, which looked a lot like something German troops carried in WWII. Still partially concealed by the elephant grass, I couldn’t make his outline perfectly, so I aimed for what seemed like it would be center mass.
“Rodriguez,” came the reply. With his response, he’d shifted slightly. I had a clear shot at his chest. His name suggested that he might be a local, but the lack of an accent encouraged me.
“Manifold,” I said, half expecting sudden movement. As he hesitated, I pulled the slack out of the trigger, preparing to fire. Behind me, I heard the bolt from an M-16 push a round into the chamber. It seems dude had managed to free himself and finish removing his rifle from its case, fear, apparently, becoming quite the motivator.
“Floodlight,” Rodriguez responded. Normally, I’d have told him to advance, but the odd weapon and different shape of his helmet had me in quandary.
Then, from behind me, the other soldier growled, “What fucking unit are you with, asshole?” Rodriguez spat out a collection of numbers describing his unit, and when we didn’t respond right away, he continued “3rd of 73rd, I’m a tanker, drive a Sheridan.”
We called him forward. Turns out, he had already donned the helmet he wears in the tank, expecting to find his vehicle before he found random Joes hanging out by the fence. His Kevlar helmet hanged from the back of his rucksack (We both recommended he put it back on). We pulled the fence up—rather than cutting it—to crawl under, and with the hanging guy leading the way and Rodriguez pulling rear guard, we resumed our course.
A few minutes back into the elephant grass, hanging dude put up his hand, stopping both of us. We dropped to our knees instinctively, hearing whispering from ahead. A second later, a black captain, standing six-feet-and-change tall, walked back and surveyed the two of us. He wasn’t carrying a weapon.
At first, I assumed that it had somehow been lost during the drop, but as I looked, I discredited that assumption. He wore almost no camouflage paint, didn’t even have a sidearm that I could see, and his rucksack was too small and dainty to be carrying a combat load (I later asked: he was from division headquarters and had found his way onto the jump by bumping someone who had actually served a purpose on the ground. We would learn, after counting several members of our company as missing in action, that a large collection of paper pushers had done the same so they could get combat jump stars. Rumor has it that they were severely punished and subsequently denied the gold star.).
So the captain fell in with us, walking upright. Quickly, I slowed and waved him up to me. “Sir, you can’t walk upright,” I said. “You make a big target, and any little brown guys hanging out in the grass might see your helmet.” He didn’t listen until, a moment later, I heard Rodriguez say something similar in a much harsher tone, and I clearly heard: “If someone pops you a new asshole in the forehead, we’ll leave your stupid ass here.” It was like a deal had been struck, and Capt. Pogue understood: We won’t tell you how to drive your desk, and you don’t argue when Rodriguez tells you how to unfuck yourself.
Not five minutes later, we arrived at the edge of the runway we were supposed to have landed on. Hanging guy pulled out his night vision, got his bearings and passed them on. I saw the infrared signal for Alpha Company toward the southwest end and knew where to go. Rodriguez had already spotted his place, and we took off, leaving Capt. Pogue to find his own way.
About 100 meters down the runway, I approached Alpha Co.’s marker. A sergeant held it. There was another marker farther down, but it wasn’t mine. “Sergeant,” I said, “anybody here from Charlie?” There wasn’t, so I moved a ways down, dropped my ruck and watched for movement in the grass. For the next few moments, I was Charlie Company.
Our first arrival was a Pennsylvania kid named Bill Clepper, who instantly handed me his weapon, pulled out his poncho and smoked a cigarette. I stuck my head in for a drag and returned to watch. Next, members of the company started filing in rapidly. When Sgt. Husketh arrived with Charlie’s marker, I finally thought to look at my watch.
What seemed like forever had been less than half an hour from the time I’d stepped out the door of the plane. Time didn’t fly. I assume this means I wasn’t having fun.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Appendix B: Stuff…? It’s what’s for dinner
The old guy never sent back his swordfish.
Each time I visited the table, he had more bad things to say, but he refused my offers to bring a new piece. I brought about a gallon of tartar, a bottle of malt vinegar, butter, even some mustard, but he never settled down until, of my own volition, I brought over our cache of hot sauces—seven different bottles from five different brands using four different chilies. He jumped on the Tabasco, and before my very eyes, the fish disappeared.
He shut up, and I understood.
“You were in the military?” I asked as he and the wife debated dessert versus departure. He didn’t have that hard-line look that so many Vietnam era vets wear like a badge—the cropped hair, piercing stare, and mannerisms that suggest they’re still in.
“Yeah,” he said. “How did you know?”
****
Hot sauce.
For the first time in my life, I was craving hot sauce. I wasn’t choking but I really wanted to be; a good Heimlich maneuver would have really settled my stomach
I was eating food Uncle Sam gave me, food I wanted to give back. It was my first MRE—Meal, Ready to Eat. Wrapped in a dark brown pouch that had chaffed my right thigh all day, it made a complete meal. Protein, starch, fruit, crackers, even peanut butter, preserved and made portable in a pouch that fit the pocket of my camouflage trousers.
Menu 2: Ham and Chicken Loaf: a jagged dash across the salted slab marked the border between processed meats, one side pinkish, the other grey. The juices had merged thanks to salt content, imparting identical flavors with differing textures. I fought the gag reflex the moment I smelled it.
Another pouch held “bean component”: graying pintos floating in tomato sauce, like watered-down Spaghetti-Os with stale beans subbing for pasta. They almost crunched. Dehydrated peaches smelled edible, but after 10 minutes soaking in water, they never completely softened.
Every MRE felt this way.
In addition, Accessory Packet C provided all the necessities: salt (in case my arteries weren’t hardening at a sufficient pace), candy (a reward after forcing lunch down), coffee, creamer, and sugar (to help revive the diner after nearly passing out), Chiclets gum (to get the taste out), matches (in case I wanted to light myself on fire before I ate another), and toilet paper (which needed to be collected because MREs, I would eventually learn, rallied during digestion and came out as a group, even though they had entered individually and at timely intervals).
I learned a couple of weeks into basic training that most of the jokes made of the MRE acronym are more accurate than the real name. Meal, Ready to Eat morphed through the years into Meals Refused by Everyone, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians, Meals Rumored as Edible, and—based on the way they seem to resist digestion—Meals Refusing to Exit.
Until that first smell, I had been excited at the prospect. Unfortunately, the military doesn’t look at food the way civilized peoples do. Sustenance falls right in with guns and bullets on the priority list, and if Uncle Sam has to cut corners somewhere, most Joes prefer the skimping be done on food. The Army doesn’t worry about pleasing Joe with it. They figure as long as he thinks he might die soon, he’ll love whatever is offered, no matter how bad it is.
And bad it is.
But Joe is resourceful. If he can find something to improve on dinner, he’d use it. Improvements ranged from rituals to condiments. A Sergeant named Pantaloguos used to use the same spoon for every meal. When he finished, he would simply lick it clean and return it to his breast pocket. Bacteria, he said, “adds flavor.” And if he got sick, it meant he was back at the billets before everyone else. One of the guys bought an MRE cookbook that had everything from cheeseburgers and chili to peach cobbler and pudding.
Spices helped. Cpl. Mike Stone carried tins of curry and mustard powder, but I carried everything else. Through years of trial and error, I found that variety in spice made life more livable.
My position was a regular stop for our first sergeant, lots of Joes and some of the officers because I was keeper of the spice rack. In a beat up tanker’s bag that I’d liberated, I carried salt and pepper, celery salt, Tabasco, Frank’s, Pete’s, Taco Bell hot taco sauce, horseradish sauce, steak sauce, and a few other flavors that I can’t remember. At each meal, I would fool my taste buds into thinking something horrible wasn’t about to happen, mostly, through spices.
Based on the law of declining standards, some meals turned out surprisingly good, using only the contents of the pouch. A meal featuring the bean component and a freeze dried beef patty made chili that, especially if it could be warmed, would almost be worthy of eating in the real world. Other Joes would turn the same meal into a cheeseburger on crackers.
Whenever possible, we’d heat our MREs. In the days before the flameless heater, we’d go to any extent for a hot meal on a cold day. Boxes were burned if the situation allowed. Pouches would be stuffed in pockets, inside T-shirts, in the trouser waistline. In non-tactical operations, a solid fuel tablet called a heat tab would boil water and, in the process, heat an entrée.
But that leftover boiled water—that was the one thing the Army got right. My squad used to gather on cold mornings and make a mocha that was thick enough to stand a plastic spoon in. We’d put everything in there: Chiclets, caramels, creamer, coffee, sugar, three, four, or five packets of cocoa. We’d hold it to warm our hands, take a sip and pass it on. When we’d been shivering for two hours and could look forward to another 14 hours of the same, a hot cup and a few sips of cocoa feels like a little brush with heaven.
That same cocoa and creamer could be combined with peanut butter for pudding. The creamer, along with reconstituted peaches, jelly (optional), sugar, and crackers, made a peach cobbler that, considering I don’t like peach cobbler, was as good as any I’ve had since I got out.
Many entrees were beyond help, and the only salvation for them was hot sauce. My mouth would burn so badly that I’d plow through the meal in seconds just so I could drink water and cool my palate. The Omelet with Ham entrée was one of these. Usually a solid mass of egg and chunks of ham sitting in egg-scented water, it had the texture of a stale curd. To force it down, I’d add just about every spice in the rack, along with crackers and the sawdust-textured Oatmeal Cookie Bar before mixing it with the included potatoes au gratin. Even then, eating was a matter of need rather than desire. Everyone had a meal they saved for last, usually in hopes that they’d skip a meal at some point and not need it, or that re-supply would arrive in time to continue putting it off. The omelet was mine.
But for most of the guys, hot sauce provided the sole salvation. I was willing to carry extra weight to hide the built-in shelf-stable flavor. Not everyone was, so those little bottles of Tabasco that came in the accessory packet worked wonders.
By the time I was done, I bequeathed the spice rack and my extensive knowledge of how to make an MRE diet livable to one of the guys in my squad. I could’ve written my own cookbook at that point. And it gave me a lifelong appreciation for hot sauce.
And to this day, I believe I can spot a former soldier, based simply on his or her application and preference of hot sauces. A civilian adds hot sauce like they like the sauce, either directly on the meal or on the side, and in a manner that suggests they want some spice. A former, Joe, jarhead, squid, Air Force hippie, or coastie will add it like they mean it, like they’re trying to hide something, even when they like the food. If they’re using hot sauce, they are putting it on with vigor, as though they need it.
If a civilian uses his hot sauce with the reserve of a connoisseur tasting cognac, then a Vet uses it like a drunk getting his first taste of rot gut in weeks.
****
“How’d you know?” he asked again, reviving me from what may have been a bad dream.
“Hot sauce,” I said. “You didn’t add a flavor to your fish; you gave it a new one. Civilians don’t do that. Civilians will send it back first.”
As it turned out, the Master Chief had retired after 30-plus years in the Coast Guard. We stood for awhile, comparing taste bud horror stories until the impatience of both his wife and my bar manager pulled us apart.
As they made for the door, he came to the bar and offered his hand, thanking me for having worn green. I shook it. As he smiled, he said: “Remember, son, for those who have fought for it, filet mignon has a flavor the protected will never know.”
It took us both about a minute to stop laughing when I held up an unopened bottle of Tabasco. “In honor of your years of service and dedication to these United States, Master Chief your-name-here, I am honored to present you and your taste buds with this token of thanks from a grateful nation.”
He laughed, took the bottle, and left with another shake of my hand.
He wasn’t supposed to take the bottle. I had to replace it.
Each time I visited the table, he had more bad things to say, but he refused my offers to bring a new piece. I brought about a gallon of tartar, a bottle of malt vinegar, butter, even some mustard, but he never settled down until, of my own volition, I brought over our cache of hot sauces—seven different bottles from five different brands using four different chilies. He jumped on the Tabasco, and before my very eyes, the fish disappeared.
He shut up, and I understood.
“You were in the military?” I asked as he and the wife debated dessert versus departure. He didn’t have that hard-line look that so many Vietnam era vets wear like a badge—the cropped hair, piercing stare, and mannerisms that suggest they’re still in.
“Yeah,” he said. “How did you know?”
****
Hot sauce.
For the first time in my life, I was craving hot sauce. I wasn’t choking but I really wanted to be; a good Heimlich maneuver would have really settled my stomach
I was eating food Uncle Sam gave me, food I wanted to give back. It was my first MRE—Meal, Ready to Eat. Wrapped in a dark brown pouch that had chaffed my right thigh all day, it made a complete meal. Protein, starch, fruit, crackers, even peanut butter, preserved and made portable in a pouch that fit the pocket of my camouflage trousers.
Menu 2: Ham and Chicken Loaf: a jagged dash across the salted slab marked the border between processed meats, one side pinkish, the other grey. The juices had merged thanks to salt content, imparting identical flavors with differing textures. I fought the gag reflex the moment I smelled it.
Another pouch held “bean component”: graying pintos floating in tomato sauce, like watered-down Spaghetti-Os with stale beans subbing for pasta. They almost crunched. Dehydrated peaches smelled edible, but after 10 minutes soaking in water, they never completely softened.
Every MRE felt this way.
In addition, Accessory Packet C provided all the necessities: salt (in case my arteries weren’t hardening at a sufficient pace), candy (a reward after forcing lunch down), coffee, creamer, and sugar (to help revive the diner after nearly passing out), Chiclets gum (to get the taste out), matches (in case I wanted to light myself on fire before I ate another), and toilet paper (which needed to be collected because MREs, I would eventually learn, rallied during digestion and came out as a group, even though they had entered individually and at timely intervals).
I learned a couple of weeks into basic training that most of the jokes made of the MRE acronym are more accurate than the real name. Meal, Ready to Eat morphed through the years into Meals Refused by Everyone, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians, Meals Rumored as Edible, and—based on the way they seem to resist digestion—Meals Refusing to Exit.
Until that first smell, I had been excited at the prospect. Unfortunately, the military doesn’t look at food the way civilized peoples do. Sustenance falls right in with guns and bullets on the priority list, and if Uncle Sam has to cut corners somewhere, most Joes prefer the skimping be done on food. The Army doesn’t worry about pleasing Joe with it. They figure as long as he thinks he might die soon, he’ll love whatever is offered, no matter how bad it is.
And bad it is.
But Joe is resourceful. If he can find something to improve on dinner, he’d use it. Improvements ranged from rituals to condiments. A Sergeant named Pantaloguos used to use the same spoon for every meal. When he finished, he would simply lick it clean and return it to his breast pocket. Bacteria, he said, “adds flavor.” And if he got sick, it meant he was back at the billets before everyone else. One of the guys bought an MRE cookbook that had everything from cheeseburgers and chili to peach cobbler and pudding.
Spices helped. Cpl. Mike Stone carried tins of curry and mustard powder, but I carried everything else. Through years of trial and error, I found that variety in spice made life more livable.
My position was a regular stop for our first sergeant, lots of Joes and some of the officers because I was keeper of the spice rack. In a beat up tanker’s bag that I’d liberated, I carried salt and pepper, celery salt, Tabasco, Frank’s, Pete’s, Taco Bell hot taco sauce, horseradish sauce, steak sauce, and a few other flavors that I can’t remember. At each meal, I would fool my taste buds into thinking something horrible wasn’t about to happen, mostly, through spices.
Based on the law of declining standards, some meals turned out surprisingly good, using only the contents of the pouch. A meal featuring the bean component and a freeze dried beef patty made chili that, especially if it could be warmed, would almost be worthy of eating in the real world. Other Joes would turn the same meal into a cheeseburger on crackers.
Whenever possible, we’d heat our MREs. In the days before the flameless heater, we’d go to any extent for a hot meal on a cold day. Boxes were burned if the situation allowed. Pouches would be stuffed in pockets, inside T-shirts, in the trouser waistline. In non-tactical operations, a solid fuel tablet called a heat tab would boil water and, in the process, heat an entrée.
But that leftover boiled water—that was the one thing the Army got right. My squad used to gather on cold mornings and make a mocha that was thick enough to stand a plastic spoon in. We’d put everything in there: Chiclets, caramels, creamer, coffee, sugar, three, four, or five packets of cocoa. We’d hold it to warm our hands, take a sip and pass it on. When we’d been shivering for two hours and could look forward to another 14 hours of the same, a hot cup and a few sips of cocoa feels like a little brush with heaven.
That same cocoa and creamer could be combined with peanut butter for pudding. The creamer, along with reconstituted peaches, jelly (optional), sugar, and crackers, made a peach cobbler that, considering I don’t like peach cobbler, was as good as any I’ve had since I got out.
Many entrees were beyond help, and the only salvation for them was hot sauce. My mouth would burn so badly that I’d plow through the meal in seconds just so I could drink water and cool my palate. The Omelet with Ham entrée was one of these. Usually a solid mass of egg and chunks of ham sitting in egg-scented water, it had the texture of a stale curd. To force it down, I’d add just about every spice in the rack, along with crackers and the sawdust-textured Oatmeal Cookie Bar before mixing it with the included potatoes au gratin. Even then, eating was a matter of need rather than desire. Everyone had a meal they saved for last, usually in hopes that they’d skip a meal at some point and not need it, or that re-supply would arrive in time to continue putting it off. The omelet was mine.
But for most of the guys, hot sauce provided the sole salvation. I was willing to carry extra weight to hide the built-in shelf-stable flavor. Not everyone was, so those little bottles of Tabasco that came in the accessory packet worked wonders.
By the time I was done, I bequeathed the spice rack and my extensive knowledge of how to make an MRE diet livable to one of the guys in my squad. I could’ve written my own cookbook at that point. And it gave me a lifelong appreciation for hot sauce.
And to this day, I believe I can spot a former soldier, based simply on his or her application and preference of hot sauces. A civilian adds hot sauce like they like the sauce, either directly on the meal or on the side, and in a manner that suggests they want some spice. A former, Joe, jarhead, squid, Air Force hippie, or coastie will add it like they mean it, like they’re trying to hide something, even when they like the food. If they’re using hot sauce, they are putting it on with vigor, as though they need it.
If a civilian uses his hot sauce with the reserve of a connoisseur tasting cognac, then a Vet uses it like a drunk getting his first taste of rot gut in weeks.
****
“How’d you know?” he asked again, reviving me from what may have been a bad dream.
“Hot sauce,” I said. “You didn’t add a flavor to your fish; you gave it a new one. Civilians don’t do that. Civilians will send it back first.”
As it turned out, the Master Chief had retired after 30-plus years in the Coast Guard. We stood for awhile, comparing taste bud horror stories until the impatience of both his wife and my bar manager pulled us apart.
As they made for the door, he came to the bar and offered his hand, thanking me for having worn green. I shook it. As he smiled, he said: “Remember, son, for those who have fought for it, filet mignon has a flavor the protected will never know.”
It took us both about a minute to stop laughing when I held up an unopened bottle of Tabasco. “In honor of your years of service and dedication to these United States, Master Chief your-name-here, I am honored to present you and your taste buds with this token of thanks from a grateful nation.”
He laughed, took the bottle, and left with another shake of my hand.
He wasn’t supposed to take the bottle. I had to replace it.
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