Battle Rations

Our team chose ‘Battle Ration’ as the topic of our project in US History class. I, Dean, Seri, Seojin, and Yoosoo were one team. We decided to research about the rations that soldiers ate during World War 2. United States, Japan, Britain, and Germany were our targets. Among them, I want to talk about United States’ rations this time.

The major United States army rations are divided into battle field rations and base rations. Then, battle rations are divided into three major rations which are C, D, and K rations. C rations are the food package for the squad or company. It was usually dropped by planes to airborne troops who fought inside the enemy line. These were like the big presents contain meat, D-ration, biscuits, candies, and cigarettes. D rations are simple rations that were regarded as the emergence rations such as chocolate bars and candies that contain high nutrients. K rations are the small food package for the individual soldiers. They contain breakfast, supper, and dinner. Most of these foods have extremely high nutrients to reach soldiers’ amount of energy needs. The base rations were like cafeteria. Soldiers had to eat in 20 minutes for other soldiers. Foods were most cheap cafeteria foods like hot dogs, chipped beef, hamburgers, beans, rice, corned beef, and bread. They could have water, milk, and coffee for beverage. Only base units could eat hot foods.

US battle ration is illegal to possess the army ration for normal civilian, so it was very hard to get. First, I went Nam Dae Moon market to search US field ration on Sunday with my parents. However, the place was close for Sunday, unfortunately! Then, I went to Itaewon. I was looking around for it for almost three hours and finally got it. I bought one box because the storekeeper said he doesn’t sell apiece. One box contained twelve C rations, so I ate one of it for dinner. Then, I got stomachache...