Warmtoast’s photo reminded me on coming back from TELIC. Having spent a good part of the year away in Incirlik then Baghdad, with Baghdad being US MREs for months I finally returned to the bosom of the caring RAF when I got down to Basra for the trip back to Blighty. Usual Movements faff meant we arrived about 24 hrs early and other than counting the bullet holes and playing I spy there wasn’t much to do and no shops open in the International terminal. It was like a Middle East version of Brize.
Sensing they probably should feed us they brought a boiler out, a box of tea bags and a big box of sausage rolls. The only problem with the rolls was on inspection and checking the ingredients we decided they probably had a half life rather than a shelf life and they were frozen solid. Stick a charge bag behind them and you could easily fire it from a Chally 2 and take out an Iraqi tank with one. When we asked about how we were supposed to defrost them, ‘dunno’ was the (obvious) answer, so we ended up turning the boiler up to full and wrapping the outside with sausage rolls hoping the heat would defrost them sometime before we died of starvation. In hindsight, it’s probably just as well we couldn’t defrost them. Survive the war, felled by MOD rations on the way home doesn’t make for a good war story to impress the girls!