Military Ration Packs

Heroes Remember

Military Ration Packs

Transcript

They got some rations, old rations in cans, ration packs, military ration packs. And I know we had some US Army rations packed in 1942 and I was eating it in March of ‘57. I opened up a can of bread. It was like a large can, probably five inch diameter, about seven inch high, the size you say you buy tomatoes today in a can. It was bread and you couldn’t get it out. So you had to open up the bottom and the top and push it out and it came out like a mound of sugar, just flour, just dust and in order to use it, eat it, you’d open up a little tin, a small tin like you buy lobster paste or something, a little can of that was butter. You open that up, you take a chunk of it with your knife and pick up a handful and put it in. You make like a snowball and eat your bread and oh you’d have heartburn from it, doughy, you know, and the rations weren’t good. Some of it, ugh. Thank god they had like peaches or apricots or little cans of it, you know, survived on that. And our meals like I say even potatoes, there was never, never a fresh potato all the time I was in Egypt. It was all dehydrated, packaged potatoes, like you know, add water and stir them up and milk, never seen milk all the time I was over there it was just powdered milk. You couldn’t drink it, there was always lumps in it, you know, and you wonder I’m still alive some times.

Description

Mr. Perry shares his experiences of eating food provided by the military that had been packed in 1942.

John Perry

Mr. John Perry was born October 30, 1936 in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. He came from a large family of nine children. During his teen years, he worked on fishing boats and local farms as a labourer and at age 17 decided to travel to Halifax to join the army. He accepted training in Camp Borden and spent two years in Manitoba. Too young to join the Korean War, Mr. Perry became part of the United Nations Emergency Force where he travelled to Egypt and worked in the motor transport area as a motor transport driver. After military service, Mr. Perry used his knowledge in motor transport and held various positions with the motor vehicle branch of provincial government. With 38 years service, Mr. Perry retired and settled with this family in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

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