or
If we let them cook their food, they won’t be angry enough to kill people.
For no good reason, I was looking into C-Rations. They gave you cigarettes and toilet paper, but no way to actually cook your food. Not to worry, the Army being what it is, a way around that was found. Using a little can out of the C-Ration pack, plus the P-38 can opener (or better yet a “church key”) and a block of Trioxane and you’re all set. But a lump of C-4 works even better. (!) Which, I’m sure, led to the old saying: If a man has access to C-4, no meal will be eaten cold. But I looked around a little more. The British Army had a personal cooker. It used hexamine tablets instead of Trioxine or C-4. And it looked an awful lot like an Esbit stove. Sure enough, the German Army were in on the stove thing too. It seems the Swiss and the Swedish Armies also had theirs.
So.
The British Army, German Army, Swiss Army and Swedish Army had an issue stove. If I get these (plus a big ol’ lump of C-4), is my “Army Stoves of the World” collection complete? (Not counting the big “mess hall” stoves or the new chemical packs for the MRE’s.)
Was it a more common practice for Modern Armies to issue or not to issue stoves along with modern rations?
I do not understand the problem. My boat has a stove. My home has a stove. I can go for weeks or months without using them. I can eat canned food, cheese, deli, bread, wine, cold cereal, fruits and vegetables and lots of other things which do not require cooking. Most of the time I only use the stove for making tea or coffee. When I go for weeks without cooking I do it only because I find it more convenient that way and I do not miss anything. And I am in the relative comfort of my boat or home. If I was in a war zone with people shooting at me, complaining that the food was cold would be the last thing on my mind.
I’m sure it seems that way to you, but complaining about cold food has been widespread among all armies, in all campaigns, as long as men have been shooting at each others. In fact, It was a complaint before they were shooting at each other, even when most of their meals weren’t hot at home (e.g. when meals were cooked in hearths and fireplaces, or where wasting fuel was an issue)
According to current DoD figures, a soldier can burn 4000 kcal/day, but it is a real challenge to get them to eat more than 3000 kcal in combat rations. Hot palatable meals are more than just an issue of morale, they are important to sustained combat effectiveness.
Note that in most of the places you mention, you’ve got somewhere to go inside and get warm. For soldiers in the field, particularly in winter conditions, warm food and particularly hot drinks do a lot to keep them feeling warm (I don’t know whether it helps objectively, but it certainly helps with how you feel!) and keeps morale up. Put it this way: soldiers are some of the keenest people in the world on light packing. If they thought that life would be acceptable without the stoves, they wouldn’t be carrying them!
When I bought a hexamine stove the chap selling it said “these are the things that get put in ejection seats” and sure enough, when I saw a doc on ejection seats, a guy (at Martin Baker I guess) was putting in ration packs - including a stove.
I don’t know if it’s just RAF chaps who feel the need for a nice cuppa tea and a biscuit after pranging the old kite.
(I seem to remember the Russians make do with a cigarette, judging by that oft-screened footage of a dramatic low-level ejection from a MIG-29 at some airshow)
Yes. The question is:
Was it a more common practice for Modern Armies to issue or not to issue stoves along with modern rations?
Who did issue stoves? (Not “Should stoves be issued?”)