Ha, my Dad was in the navy during the Korean War … he says they called it, “shit on a shingle.” (it was on toast.)
Shit on a shingle-SOS- is a traditional military dish. Chipped beef is fairly light and doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and in the field, this can be very important. Putting it in a cream sauce makes it more palatable, and toast is fairly easy to make. Personally, I prefer my creamed beef over rice or potatoes, but I’ll eat it on toast.
In the armed forces, did everyone have to carry their own chipped beef fork or did the outfit share one?
I would assume they used a military fork.
It also served as an emergency fund for women. They couldn’t own land or property, but they could sell the silver in a pinch. But keeping a trunk full of cash? How gauche! One might suppose one was actually - gasp! - planning for one’s economic downturn! Silverware was silver, in a socially acceptable hoarding shape.
This is why stealing the silver was such a big friggin’ deal. It wasn’t that they couldn’t spare a fork, it was that the fork was in fact part of their savings account.
Oh wow, WhyNot, I never realized that. Makes a little more sense now.