Good Food On Board Ship

Heroes Remember

Good Food On Board Ship

Transcript

Well, we were lucky in Sioux because we had a cafeteria-style, one of the first ones, a cafeteria-style messing as opposed to broad side messing where everyone, every mess goes to the galley and gets it in a, in a dish, sort of thing, and the only, the only problem we had with, with food was we, we had stored, my, my chief was very dedicated, George van Haff, and as soon as we came into harbour, we stored ship. American stores were excellent, you know. They were, they were getting stores in like the Canadian Navy's getting now, which is really good. But he, he stored the ship and we went back out on patrol right away, and then Cayuga came out and Cayuga was, had the Captain Tees the senior commander in the, our squadron, and he said, "Well, you got, you've stored and I got more guns than you and I'm senior to you so you transfer your stores to us and we'll let you go back to Sasebo and restore." Well, that sounded reasonable enough and we transferred all our fancy American stores to him and we departed and we were gone for four hours when they came back and said, "You can't go to Sasebo. You gotta stay out here. You, you'll store off a British Cruiser." So we went and (inaudible) transferred stuff from HMS Belfast and there was sides of mutton coming up over and they were as big as sides of beef. And George van Haff said, "We took them on board off the starboard side and we walked right across the ship and threw them them in the water on the port side." Nobody in the Canadian Navy liked mutton. When we were in training, new entry training, we could tell the day of the week by the menu and I think it was Saturday we always had mutton. Well, they cook it about 6:00 in the morning and by the time they serve it at 11:30, it's all grease, you know. Just terrible. But other than that, the food was good.

Description

Mr. White remembers the quality of the food on board HMCS Sioux.

William White

Mr. White was born Feb. 12, 1930. His father, a coal miner by profession, fought in both the First and the Second World Wars. The family moved to Nanaimo when Mr. White was about 1 year old. From a very young age Mr. White had wanted to join the Navy. He realized that dream when he enlisted on March 1, 1948. He set sail from the West Coast on the HMCS Sioux for Korea, in June of 1950. On the way to Korea they stopped in Hawaii to receive some anti-submarine training. Bt he says they never really received much training until they came under American control in Korea.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 02:02
Person Interviewed:: William White
War, Conflict or Mission:: Korean War
Location/Theatre:: Waters off South Korea
Battle/Campaign:: Korea
Branch:: Navy
Units/Ship:: HMCS Sioux
Occupation:: Storekeeper

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Good Food On Board Ship

Heroes Remember