There was a Vietnam Vet talking about humanitarian aid that American and Allied soldiers distributed among the Vietnamese while serving there, and he distinctly said he gave out “John Wayne Bars.”
Does anyone know what these things were? Chocolate bars? High energy food bars from ration packs?
Any help would be appreciated.
C-Rations had a “treat” in each meal. One of those treats was the chocolate wafer. Very hard, but had a lot of choco in it. I actually liked it and was quite disappointed when the Army switched to MRE.
Yes, any candy in the C-rats was usually refered to as a John Wayne bar. I remember the dark chocolate bars, the peanut butter bars. Very hard and dry. Legend was they were made to constipate you.
That’s pretty funny Ronald. The rumor around my unit was they had laxitives in them. Maybe the Army was leaking conflicting stories to cover up what was really in them.
“John Wayne bars are made of people! PEOPLE!”
Oh wait, wrong movie…
Yes, but equally wooden actors. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Duke, but most of the time the man couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.
Now, hold on there, pilgrim. I agree that the Duke may not have been up there with Lord Laurence Olivier, but he was pretty damn good in all the John Ford movies, especially “The Quiet Man.”
EvilGandhi:
“The rumor around my unit was they had laxitives in them. Maybe the Army was leaking conflicting stories to cover up what was really in them.”
If they really did contain laxatives, it probably wouldn’t be the Army that would be leaking. 
[ducking for cover]
Don’t speak of that movie, which inverted mangled and ruined the plot of a nice short story. (Not that that was John Wayne’s fault, that was a John Ford stunt).
Original story plot concerned a reticent guy who at first refused to complain when picked on by his loud idiot brother-in-law who did not know that the quiet man he was picking on was a retired professional boxer, and when bro-in-law made a jackass of himself for sufficiently long, the other man broke his promise to himself and beat the starch out of the bully in about 4 seconds. The people of the community rethought their previous macho beliefs about the manliness of a man who does not appear to be in a hurry to bluster and fight.
In the John Ford version, the bully finally provokes the quiet man into fighting and the fight rolls out the door and down the street and goes on and on and the two men become good buddies now that they’ve had this way cool knock-down drag-out fight. The community cheers the wonderful fact that fighting is a manly activity that brings guys closer together, and quiet men who refuse to fight and sissies that need to be made into men by being provoked to fight like that.
Praise Wayne for something else.
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I’ve thought the same thing for years. Although TQM wasn’t a bad movie, it did comlpletly reverse the point of the orignal story. I was beginning to think I was the only one who felt that way.
Go ahead, be frank with me.
In fact, be anyone you’d like.
Modern MRE’s have a “Chocolate Covered Oatmeal Cookie” that is commonly refered to as a “John Wayne” bar; earilier versions of the MRE also had a “Brownie” (and I use the term loosely) that was as hard as a brick and a chocolate covered cookie (actually, it was two cookies, bonded together with chocolate) that was refered to as a “Rambo Cookie” because you supposedly had to be as strong and as tough as John Rambo to seperate the cookies and then eat them.
The standard rumor is that Army MREs are made to constipate, but actually, I believe they do so only because of the low water content of the foods in them.
I lived on lots of MREs in Desert Shield/Storm, but kept my water intake up, so regularity wasn’t a problem, for me at least.
The other rumor is that the “Chicklets”-style gum that comes in the accessory packet is actually the ex-lax, and I can attest to the fact that, after chewing on the gum for just a short period of time (10 to 15 minutes), I would alwaysget a sudden urge to, you know,…hit the latrine.
The accessory packet also contained a small supply of toilet paper. Very thoughtfull of the people that designed them.
My tank commander in DS/DS also refered to the Brownie as a “Butt Plug”. I don’t believe he was alluding to any sexual use of the Brownie, but instead commenting on its effect on the human waste elimination system.
God, at least I hope so; I lived with the man in close proximity for several months.
ExTank