Peeling potatoes in the army

Cafe Society
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My bug story is not that bad, but worth a mention.

Claymore mine training day, out in the field. Somehow it was not an MRE day, but a hot field chow day. Even had brownies for dessert. Chocolate fudge brownies with rice crispies. No pre-packaged treats here, but real brownies made in the Army mess hall.

One soldier noticed something and picked out the rice crispies. Each one had eyes. Two little black-dot eyes. Turns out they were maggots baked to a crisp. Also turns out we were so hungry, and brownies a rare treat, we ate them anyway–“crispies” and all.

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My father, a WWII veteran, explained it to me that way when I asked about the peeling potatoes gag. I may have asked about it when I got my first G.I. Joe comic and there was a page featuring Flash peeling potatoes. When I was in the Army, I never peeled potatoes, even when I was on DRO (Dining Room Orderly, formerly KP) while in AIT.

How recently did they have new recruits peeling potatoes or doing other KP duty? Because doesn’t the army now outsource food service to an outside vendor, even at domestic bases?

Culinary Specialist is still an Army MOS (Death From Within!). When I was stationed in Turkey, we had locals working at the chow hall with a US civilian managing it. I then had a change of station to Ft. Bragg where everyone working in the chow halls were soldiers. This was the 90s and I assume it’s still similar now.

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An excellent source of protein!

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Yuck!

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I remember from my Living History days that water in which potato peels have been soaked can be used as a leavening agent for rustic bread. At least that’s what the US Army did in the early 1800s. So the peels weren’t just tossed away as trash.

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From A Private’s Affair (1959):

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When I was in basic training in the 93, and when DH was there in 04, there was always KP (“kitchen police”) which is to say, all the unskilled stuff that the paid staff had us do. We didn’t do any cooking. We served, washed dishes, mopped the floors, and loaded field chow containers for companies nor coming in for lunch.

There were five companies when I was training, and a lot of cadre that had the option of eating in the chow hall as well. Out of a platoon of 60, when my platoon had KP, they’d pull about 12 of us.

It was never punishment. In fact, the people who got the most KP were actually doing well. Here’s why: if you passed a training the first time, you were free on “retraining” day. But if you didn’t pass something, you had to go through the training again. Retraining day would be the day your platoon had KP, and they’d send people who didn’t need to retrain on anything.

If you didn’t need to retrain, and didn’t get KP, you’d have some other duty. You might end up loading rounds into 120 clips, and serving the field chow.

Now, when DH served in Iraq, there was no KP. Everyone in food service was a hired local, except for 3 or 4 staff sergeants in charge. Same for anything that could be outsourced, like janitorial work and laundry.

In the 90s, laundry was still an MOS (a job for enlisted people), but by 2004, it no longer was.

Two things changed: one was more and more specific types of training in the military-- technology making more and more “stuff” for people to do, and more and more recruits being shunted into skilled jobs.

Another thing was the ADA-- the military is currently the nations highest employer of Deaf people, and one of the highest of disabled people in general, because now that jobs which do not require a soldier to do-- everything from filing to food service, to being the staff interpreter for all the Deaf people doing filing and food service-- are being outsourced.

And you don’t have to speak English to be hired. You have to, to enlist, but not to be hired as a civilian employee.

Also, back when the potatoes were peeled, people didn’t necessarily know the vitamins were in the skin.

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The vitamins, also, aren’t all in the skin. A skinned potato still has a fair amount of them.

FoodData Central .

Potato Nutrition Facts: The Benefits Aren't Just in the Peel .

– some discrepancy in figures, but the same general idea.

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I read that somewhere between the draft in the 1970s and the early 2000s, the Army decided that they’d just contract out all the unskilled grunt work that they used to have conscripts do, and have the volunteer enlisted personnel concentrate on actual soldiering. The logic was that basically they should respect the volunteers a bit more and not have them do bullshit like peel potatoes, mow grass, and do custodial stuff, and that a larger emphasis on actual warfighting stuff would pay dividends down the line in terms of actual combat effectiveness.

Don’t know how true that actually ever has been, but that’s what the article I read some years back said.

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My father was a Navy Chief Warrant Officer - Aviation Machinist Mate - in the south pacific during WW2. An Ensign criticized him for sending the same guys on KP every day. Said it wasn’t fair. My dad told him that his job was keeping airplanes in the air not food service. I imagine he cleaned it up for my young ears.

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I think transportation and urbanization played a role. When military companies were posted in the middle of nowhere as SOP, because there was a lot of nowhere in the world, and literal battlegrounds, and people couldn’t live in one place and work in another-- more than about a 3-mile commute was about it until motorized buses, well, the companies had to be self-contained.

Now people can work for the army without being in the army. Even in a warzone.

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I know a woman who is a licensed ASL interpreter, and she is a civilian employee at our local military base, to interpret for the Deaf civilian employees, of which she says there are quite a few.

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Interpreters are certified, not licensed, but yeah, most posts have one.

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Not only that, but there was a third partner in the practice not mentioned in the books/tv shows. As with many authors, he used a bit of poetic license to make the stories more interesting.

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He also edited some details so the people in the stories couldn’t be identified. :slight_smile:

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My father knew a plant pathologist back in the 50s who couldn’t believe anyone ate potato skins. “It’s just like eating cork!” He used to say over and over, apparently.

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This reminds me of a story told by author Piers Anthony about his time in the army, this would likely have been in the 50’s. He was assigned KP duty, peeling a big sack of potatoes. He did it the Soviet way in order to finish his sack faster. I found the story annoying, even as a young man, because I felt Anthony was proud of his cleverness in fooling the stupid Army guys, rather than ashamed at his immature wasting of supplies to feed himself and his colleagues.

/Note, this entire remembrance could be faulty as it was from 30+ years ago.

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My friend had been drafted, resented the army, and the wastefulness was part of the value of his method, in his opinion.

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U.S. Army here, '86-'91. Never peeled a single potato. For that matter, I never had more involvement in food prep than opening an MRE or a T-Rat.

KP duty, for the very few times I actually had it, mainly consisted of unloading the food delivery trucks and moving the crates of foodstuffs to the freezers/refrigerators in the DFACs. Our Basic Training and PLDC DFACs were run by civilian contractors; all others were run by Army personnel, in which case KP was picking up/returning mermites for field exercises.

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And relatively filling.