By: Ed Creamer

The mess halls in WESTPAC serve good cornbread. I say that because most of the cornbread served west of the Mississippi is actually sweet tasting. If you had tried to serve it back home you would expect to see candles on it and all the servers standing around singing to you. Now, I’ll give you an Officer from Vermont might not know what good cornbread tasted like. But, then, they’d never really developed their pallets by eating grits.

Did you ever notice none of the serving lines had Polk salad? They didn’t. My paraloft Sgt. tried to tell me that was good eat’n. Like I told him, “If it grows wild on the ground and cows whiz on it, I don’t eat it.”

I’ve never understood why field rations never had black eye peas cooked with a big chunk of fatback in them. And, to the best of my knowledge, brain and eggs weren’t served very often. I’m not sure if I should be thankful for the last one not being served or if my mind just blocked it out.

Thankfully, turnip greens never migrated into any Mess Sgt’s cookbook. Always hated turnip greens. Although, I did hear turnip greens as well as stuffed eggplant were field tested once at Danang. Seems that individual was given a General discharge and sent back home early. Now, why didn’t I think of that one?

I always wondered if it would have shortened the war any if they had served instant Louisiana chicory coffee or recombined buttermilk. Who knows, if they had the reenlistment rate might have gone up.