Old style Ratpacks

[X-QUORK]

One for those that served when the old style 24hr Ratpacks (with tins) were still issued, in your opinions what was the biggest morale booster contained therein ?

My top three :

1. Babies' Heads
2. Bacon Grill
3. Cheese Possessed

The Rollos were pretty spesh, unless they'd been in the stores for 15 years.

What did you use to make them more interesting.....garlic, curry powder, Cherry Brandy ?

Maybe I could collate enough ideas to produce a new TV series involving Nigella Lawson, a deserted island and some coconut oil - "Big Naked Chef Survivor Brother".

[This message has been edited by X-QUORK (edited 28 June 2001).]

[Mad Pax]

We used to get ratpacks GS for expeds and exercises, and discovered that the beverage whitener went like a b@stard if packed into the rolos wrapper and fitted with a 'fuse'.
Some of us also used to wind the Cadets up by telling them that the rolos (with their arabic(?) writing) are leftovers from the Suez campaign. This stopped after the staff got sick of telling the kids what the Suez campaign was.

------------------
Oi got a bran' new comboine 'aarverster...

[Up Very Gently]

Have you seen/tasted the new "Training" rat packs? Not good. http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/frown.gif Apparently the Boil-in-the-bag jobs are too expensive, and are only to be used on ops, hence this new one. They taste like plenty of Cake and Arse has gone into them.

[Biggles Flies Undone]

I loved the old ’24 hour man packs’ - could always ensure constipation for a 48 hour ex :)

The strong tea with condensed milk from the tube was a great kick-start after a crummy nights sleep. The half tins of processed cheese went off like grenades in the end of ex clear-up bonfire http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif

[Thud_and_Blunder]

One of the nicer things about the boil-in-the-bag sets was that you were unlikely to get an Aztec bar (if you remember them..) tucked away among the sweeties.

My best was while trying many moons ago to get into a TA unit which had a joining procedure that virtually guaranteed honorary Welsh citizenship. This was 1973, and one 5000-calorie 24-hour go-bag included a Mars Bar which had been manufactured in 1957.

[feetnkneestogether]

I'm afraid X Quork I could never ever find anything morale boosting about the old rats!! I used to endure them as some kind of additional pain and suffering to the exercise. You'd get so hungry and cold you just had to eat every morcel.

I suppose everyone at first made the school boy error of opening the tinds and trying to 'cook' them in the mess tin. Mmmmmmm..... babies head mixed with chicken curry mixed with arctic rice ....oooooh I shudder even now. The mess tin of course would have to wait until the next visit to the kitchen sink to be truely clean again.

Biggles FU has a good point. I never really could dig the whole ****ting in the field/plastic bag scene. Compo would bung you up a treat and more or less save the experience till Ndex.
One bloke notched up 10 days without a dump.I'm sure it wasn't good for you.
The trouble with the new boil-in-the bag stuff was that it made you far too regular. I remember during a fairly lengthy Company attack up some Welsh hillside one bloke couldn't take it anymore and he flung his weapon down and dropped his cax and did what he had to do there and then. Sadly the 'battle' rolled on and we looked back to see Bloggs all alone, pink bottom shining in the rain.......well it amused us anyway...

How nice nowadays to go camping and just drop into the pub for dinner!

[Mad Pax]

UVG - I quite agree, the new rats are not appealing. Contract ****e again, they're practically raven meals, the dry stuff that you can't cook directly in the bag (there is a very useful measuring line on the pack though...).

[Llademos]

Getting back on topic ...

Porridge oats, with sugar and apple flakes, followed by biscuits AB (starter for ten ... what did AB stand for?) and unidentifiable pate

[Thirteen-Twelve]

Biscuits AB mmmmmmmmm yum yum. I didn't even have to swap anything to get them - people would give them away.

Judging by previous posts perhaps it is true that AB stands for:........ Anal Blockage (at least that was the rumour I heard).

------------------
I was a shiney Tiger - now I'm famous

[only1leftmate!]

The nice thing about the old rats was that you could stash them by burying them in some easily remembered place. Then If you couldn`t be @rsed to carry your rats and the extra 24hrs rats you just ditched them and dug up what you buried last month when you needed them.

Not a good strategy for deployed ops though!

I personlly liked the 12-man rats. Lots of teeth-rotting sweeties and a whole tin of strawberry jam. :)

[greenie]

Oh, the Good Ol' Days.

I have to agree that the 'Babies Head' was a treat to be enjoyed, and though the chocolate bars were more often than not white and crumbly and you mess tin became a health hazard after the first meal, it was all part of the fun.

As was, for that matter, the Smash Challenge! Trying to eat a packet of Instant Artic mash potato straight from the foil,no water allowed!

Just as a matter of interest, can fudge become toxic with age? I remember being on one exercise where before we deployed into the field a fatigue party was formed to remove all the old Cadbury's Fudge bars from the rat boxes.

Makes a change having fudge-'unpackers' I suppose!

[rolandpitch]

Biscuits AB......Yuk! Cheese Possessed.....BRILLIANT


Tried the new new rations, I'd much rather have the old Arabic Rolos back !

[This message has been edited by rolandpitch (edited 28 June 2001).]

[Flypro]

And what about those sexy little tin openers - theres still nothing to beat them!!

[Fortyodd]

Tubes of condensed milk, mmmmm. Apple Flakes, even Apple and Apricot flakes, yummee. Aztec bars, outstanding. But lets not forget one of the most versatile items of all, the green tube of margarine. Tasted like cr@p but stopped my rifle going rusty, could keep a GPMG firing all day and almost kept my boots, (DMS) waterproof!!

[TURNBULL]

X-QUORK,
I would have to go with the porridge oats, but Thud_and_Blunder can you remember 5 Boys Chocolate? PS When you coming back to the mighty wokka, it is you isn't it?

[SWB's Mate]

The boil-in-a-bag stuff wasn't too bad if you used a microwave. a MICROWAVE? Now they're the sort of exercises I like!

[bad livin']

Biscuits Fruit and Biscuits Brown were not, I take it, included in the old packs then? We were all assured by our popular scouse Flt Sgt that current rat packs are a lot better than the US mre's though...

[Blue Danube]

But what about the compo sausage? If you've never had square sausages you havn't lived!

The Tin of marg made an excellant candle as well

[Thud_and_Blunder]

Turnbull,

No - you got me there. And no, you won't be seeing me back on the double-headed dump truck either I'm afraid - PVR takes effect the moment my end of tour leave finishes. Sad to be leaving in some ways, but I'm ready for the big outside world now.

[Talking Radalt]

Bad Livin chap, MREs are truyl awful. There are a few goodies in them, chocolate brownies and ickle rolls of sweeties but the best bit is the miniature bottle of Tabasco but on the whole yes they are
"Meals Rejected by Ethiopians".
Mind you it is good to see those chewy caramel bars (based loosely on card board, you know "4 Million made every week"!) have reappeared in buttyboxes.
And finally..Porridge oats from old rat packs, with tons of sugar, even a dab of chocolate powder. Yum

[X-QUORK]

The 12 man ration boxes always had at least one item that we weren't allowed to eat, usually the sardines. We'd throw them onto the mid-exercise Smoker and stand back, after about 2 mins they went off like a White Phos round...oh how we laughed as we dodged red hot fishy shrapnel !!

Was anyone around when they supplied fags ? My old Squadron in Germany had a huge flagon of Brandy to be issued if we were to fight the WP in winter, or maybe it was for a bit of Dutch Courage.

I can't believe Screech hasn't had a mention, that stuff was the Devil's invention.

[Chinese Vic]

Bacon grill.....mmmm! Straight out of the tin having just taken it off the hexie/wood fire.

Rolled oats with plenty of chocolate powder & sugar, made up to the consistency of thin porridge.

The best bit was if you were the best cook, the guys would do your stag on guard so you could conjure up something good!

[kbf1]

Second the rolled oats and choccy powder. The bovril was a decent enough drink at night coz the coffee was **** . Anyone remember the curry (I think it was Menu F)? Little sachets of tommy ketch nicked from Maccy D's used to brighten up the scoff. I think cheese possesed and the sausages were in the 10 man packs though. Oh, and thank God for the tins of boiled sweets! Was it just my QM, or do they all have a pact with the devil when it comes to buying Fresh? I know CILOR doesn't run to much, but do they all have to buy Sunblest bread? I suppose the one advantage of this is that it is stale the second it leaves the oven so it lasts for ever.

------------------
The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the Devil's own Satanic HERD!

[Gainesy]

Compo sausages, double wrap in foil and dump on Land Rover inlet manifold. Done in about 25 miles.
Ditto on Baby Heads but add slack handful of de-hydrated water cubes in the foil; bit messier though.

[Release]

Boil in the bag stuff is brilliant. In the TA we are always issued these, not the old style ones. Big relief compared to a few years earlier.

I even had a boil in the bag stew for dinner at home once. I'd got it left over from an ex, made a nice dinner ... boiled in a saucepan on the hob!

[BEagle]

Oh this modern stuff!! Back in 1969, the combination of corned dog, potato instant and compo marg fried in a billy can was the dog's wotsits. And yes, 'Five Boys' choccie and 'Tiffin' could stil be found amongst the Korean war tinned compo mountain....

The fruit sweets in 'Mark 5' emergency rations weren't bad either!

What a thoroughly inefficient vehicle the Land Rover must be (the ba$tard heap I was allocated in the Islas Malvinas last year certainly was....0-40 mph allegedly) particularly if one can cook compo snorkers on the INLET manifold! Bratties from the local Huns cooked in foil over the EXHAUST manifold worked better!!

[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 29 June 2001).]

[Gash Handlin]

Gotta agree with Release, all the boil in the bag stuff I've had in the past few months has been great, It's a vast improvement on the sh!te the cooks manage to come up with!! (but maybe thats just my unit's bad luck)But the orange choccy bars in the 10 man packs are tops.

PS anyone out there who crewed the C130 to Gib from GLA yesterday? Hope you made the bas***ds sick from taxi to landing - 2.5 week holiday in the sun, gettin paid, mutter, mutter.

[Descend to What Height?!?]

Steak and Kidney pud :) :) :)

[MG]

I agree, the boil-in-the-bag really is good stuff, but it does get a bit samey when you've been on it for 5 weeks solid. The sad bribery that goes on just to get a menu G is the material that Cracker would love. PS - Why is there no good, traditional English food, like chicken curry anymore?

[This message has been edited by MG (edited 29 June 2001).]

[Big Green Arrow]

Bacon Grill was the bees b*ll*x.

I do like the new boil in the bag....though the natives of a West African Nation got to know what was good and what wasn't last year...they begged for tucker, we gave them the butterscotch pudding, they ate it for a few days and then started a) giving it back or b)Refusing to take it in the first place!

[Mad Pax]

Watching Cadets get their Hexi blocks mixed up with Kendal Mint cake.

Do you have any food allergies kid? Sign this form...

[Constable Clipcock]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Mad Pax originally posted:
"Some of us also used to wind the Cadets up by telling them that the rolos (with their arabic(?) writing) are leftovers from the Suez campaign. This stopped after the staff got sick of telling the kids what the Suez campaign was."</font>
What did you go and stop doing that for, eh? Any Cadet who can't pull his head out of his fourth point-of-contact and learn some f***ing Military History doesn't deserve a commission anyway!

Just the 2 cents of another highly opinionated NCO here &lt;G&gt;.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Up Very Gently originally posted:
"Have you seen/tasted the new "Training" rat packs?"</font>
Funny you should mention.... Here in the US (you all are right about the MRE's, btw), we also have a slightly cheaper, stripped-down version of the MRE called the TOTM — "Tailored Operational Training Meal". The standing joke about these is that these are "training meals" for those who haven't graduated to real ones yet!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Biggles Flies Undone originally posted:
"The strong tea with condensed milk from the tube was a great kick-start after a crummy nights sleep."</font>
I'll concur with the "strong tea" part. I'm lactose intolerant, so I raised a few British eyebrows by insisting on having mine plain. A PJI with whom I rubbed elbows insisted it was included for tanning leather rather than for drinking.

Still, there remained an important advantage to the tea bags versus the little Vitamin-C fortified instant coffee packets we had in the American C-Rats in those days (early 1980's): having the real thing available in the field, rather than that "instant" imitation cr@p!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Thud_and_Blunder originally posted:
"My best was while trying many moons ago to get into a TA unit which had a joining procedure that virtually guaranteed honorary Welsh citizenship."</font>
Artists or the clans, if you don't mind my asking? I was a guest of the former once — if I recall what the staff in the Training Wing were saying aright, there were at least two straight years during the '70s where no-one passed!

I still haul out that particular OS map when I'm explaining contour lines to support pogues. Which reminds me of another fun wind-up idea.... Next time you take a bunch of REMFs on a navex, be sure to walk point, signal a freeze in some dark draw, look intently at the ground as you pad along ninja-fashion and quietly whisper "There's one" as you warn the guy behind you "Don't step on the contour line — pass it back!"

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Llademos originally posted:
"Porridge oats....</font>
Good. I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the apple pudding from the Compos — that was really good!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Talking Radalt originally posted:
"MREs... best bit is the miniature bottle of Tabasco...."</font>
Forget the Tabasco — genuine accept-no-imitations Mexican Cholula is even better.

You're spot-on re: all else however!

[Gainesy]

Beagle,
Yep the Inlet manifold;it sits on top of the Exhaust manifold.
I thought you had an affinity with older types of machinery :)

[BEagle]

Will take your word for it - under the rusting slab of tin that passed for a Land Rover bonnet, there lurked a piece of stone-age ironmongery dripping with oil. I wouldn't have wanted to touch the damn thing - my man took it for it's weekly check in any case.

It was during a holding posting with the Harrier force in 1975 that one of the groundcrew came up with the bratties-on-the-exhaust manifold trick!! They did taste rather oily though!!

[Dan Winterland]

Personally, I prefer the 5* breakfast buffet in the Diplomat Hotel in Bahrain to Bacon Grill.

[Mad Pax]

Constable,

I know, I know, but then they don't learn history at school, and we have enough to try to get through to them - most of them think that Nelson is a WCW move...
Rourke's Drift is a dance track.
The Relief of Ladysmith is something you pay £20 for.
Anyway, I still think the Oatmeal Block takes some beating.

[Constable Clipcock]

Yep — I wish we had the Oatmeal Block in the MREs over here. Those damnable re-packaged commercial "Granola Bars" just don't cut it.

As for the WCW, I'd say "don't worry!" — given the poor standard of education among the younger generation on both sides of the Pond, with just a little more hard work doing those pint-curl in front of the TV, they'll attain the same nadir the WWF occupies over here.

Imagine my reaction as well when, upon walking into a Borders book shop in one of our major cities a few weeks ago, I asked these two early-20-something individuals manning the inventory computer whether they had a copy of Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down (I know — we've always spelled it as one word in the US military, but Bowden's a mere journalist who's never served), and being asked: "Fiction or non-fiction?"

Biggest firefight involving US forces since 'Nam, and already there are multiple-body-pierced TV-watching brats who think the Battle of Mogadishu took place on The Sci-Fi Channel!

[Talking Radalt]

....just to break it in to bite size chunks you mean?
As for cooking on vehicle exhausts, Bedfords are far better, particularly the Atlas/HIAB Crane variant, on which the exhaust runs across the underside of the front of the cab as opposed to lengthwise underneath the chassis, thus allowing better access and therefore allowing bacon butties to be reheated to the consumers exact preference. Just don't try it whilst on the move...

[PlasticCabDriver]

Ah Biscuits Brown - mmm!
Throw one in a swimming pool and 5 seconds later theres a slightly damp 300 ton biscuit sitting in the bottom of an empty pool. Not bad with the pate-type-stuff though.
Used to like the instructions for the bacon burgers - 'slice thinly and fry till golden brown'. Yeah right! If you had a laser scalpel the stuff would still come off in lumps. Much better cold than in burnt lumps.


------------------
PCD

[G. Zussnut]

Sunday Times 01/07/01

Army scientists have found a way of using food that soldiers eat to protect them from accidentally being shot at by their own side. The special meals contain compounds that are expelled from pores in the skin or from soldiers breath. When viewed by specially equipped pilots or satellites above a battlefield, the troops would appear to be brightly coloured.

You can read the full article on the S.T. web site - afraid I failed (being a computing dwarf) to get the specific address.


I bet they have a missile that homes on unfriendly farts as well!

[Talking Radalt]

...well at our place we have unfriendly farts which always home in on the Ops clerk so maybe it's not such a whacky idea!

[Pegasus#]

Condensed milk in tubes = "mummy"