Brian Meads interesting post about cooking on Military Vehicles made me
think and recollect about my time in the service and some of the ways we
used our vehicles to cook. Now before you get ideas of how I used to cook
on my GPW or such, I'm probably one of the "younger" side of people in our
hobby. I'm 32 and graduated from West Point in 1989. I was a Tank Platoon
Leader with the 24th Infantry Div (Mech) when the Gulf War Broke out. I
deployed with my platoon on 7Aug 1990 5 days after the Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait. We supported operation desert shield and Spearheaded the 18th
Airborne's attack from the deep west that enveloped and eliminated the
republican guard. Living on a tank for 9 months straight was a very intense
experience, and deploying on a tank in 126+ degree weather was quite, well
lets say warm :) Initially, because of the heat you could just bury your
MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) packets in the sand and they would be cooked in
about 5 minutes or less but at night and during the colder winter nights, we
relied on our vehicles for our culinary experimentation. The M1A1 tank is
unique in the fact that it uses a turbine engine, actually if I remember
correctly its the same engine as one of the Coast Guard Helicopters, It
generates 1500 hp and emits an exhaust of over 1200 degrees. During the
morning startups where all the tanks start their engines in sync to avoid
giving away tank strengths to listeners (always questioned this given how
many better ways there are of detection) It made an excellet opportunity to
put your canteen cup on the back grill and boil water, only took a minute or
so... great for shaving, coffee, or heating foil packets of food. You could
also simply put stick the MRE packets in the vertical grill but had to be
careful of them exploding from the intense heat and quick expansion.... when
we moved to TRATS (Tray Rations) Cans of food big enough to feed an entire
tank platoon, we would cook those in the engine compartment. The high
engine temps, the thick armor and a very conveniently located step plate
made a great dutch oven..... One of the more interesting things I saw from
our brethern in Supply, was they used to put their MRE Packs down the stack
of their HEMMETS for 5 -10 mins and then gun the engine blowing the hot
meals into the air.... It seemed to be a source of pride if they could
catch them on the way down... it really didn't matter since they were fully
wrapped anyway..... Well these are some nostalgic recollections from a not
so old tanker...... Incidentally I still maintain my armor roots with my
Ferret Mk 2/3... Nice not to have to do track maintenance every day.......
Keep em rolling,
Tony Castagno
MVPA
51 M38
52 M38
55 M38A1
63 Ferret Mk 2/3
64 M416
67 M35A2
68 M151A1
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