A Few Bottles Are Still Here, Somewhere
There is no smarter connection to make in the military than with one’s chief of supply. And for a while, at Taif Air Base, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we were good friends with the night-shift supply superintendent. Everything goes through his hands; he holds ultimate power.
And one night as we were jibber-jabbering in his office, he got a phone call.
“We found some MREs for you,” said the voice on the other line. “How many do you want?”
“Get ‘em all.” I said, not making a secret that I was listening in. The supply sergeant looked at me.
“All of them?”
“Yeah. We don’t have any. Last time I asked for a spaghetti, they were all out.”
“How many do you have?” he asked the other voice.
“Two lots.”
“Yeah, we’ll take ‘em.”
“OK, you got ‘em.”
/click
“How many is a ‘Lot’?” I asked.
“Well, MREs come 24 to a box, so I guess a ‘Lot’ would be 24 cases. That’d be 576 MREs.”
“Well that’s perfect then. We only have 200 or so people here; that should last us a while as long as the dining facility doesn’t fall apart.”
And we continued playing cards, or whatever it was we were doing.
Two weeks later, the weekly C-130 with parts and mail and supplies arrived. I know this because I got a frantic phone call from the supply sergeant.
“The F**KING MREs are here, and I’ve got a F**KING problem!”
“What’s the problem?”
“They F**KERS sent two PALLETS of MREs! 256 cases on each pallet, two pallets, 24 MREs per case, that’s like 12,000 F**KING MREs!”
“That’s a lot of MREs…”
“I HAVE TO SIGN FOR THEM BECAUSE I ORDERED THEM!”
“You need a pen?”
“NO I DON’T NEED A F**KING PEN! How do I explain to the Colonel that I need space in the hanger to store twelve thousand MREs when we only have 200 F**KING people here!”
“Well… how about you keep one of those pallets wrapped up, and then have everybody in the squadron come by and pick up two cases of MREs to take back to the trailers? That’ll empty one pallet completely, the other pallet can be for Emergency Use Only. It’s sealed, counted, and accounted for. Don’t hide it; advertise it. You’ll get an award for thinking ahead and ensuring our survival in the event of a dining hall tragedy.”
“…You’re a F**KING MORON!”
He got a small award for forward thinking, obtaining emergency supplies, and creating an emergency survival plan.
But also, we all got our own personal inventory of MREs
The thing about MREs is that each pack has something good and something horrid. For example, the spaghetti is great, but the side-items are terrible. The ham-steak is Elune-awful, but the applesauce rocks.
So what I did was to open each one of my two cases of MREs, organize everything individually, and store the stuff in metal bins. All the spaghetti was in one bin, the applesauce in another, the M&Ms, the crackers, peanut butter, jelly, everything in its own home. So if I wanted tuna noodle casserole with a side of peanut butter crackers with grape jelly, I just picked and chose from the bins.
Of course, the best thing about MREs is the little bottle of Tabasco sauce. The story goes that a senator from Louisiana made sure that when Congress passed the law to have the military buy MREs, the MRE manufacturer was required by law to purchase Tabasco-brand sauce, not a knock-off. And we’re glad he did, because the Tabasco can turn a horrid MRE experience into something salvageable.
When I divvied up my MREs, I put all the little bottles of Tabasco in a bin, all by themselves. There seemed to be hundreds of the tiny, 1/8th ounce bottles. It was my tiny gold mine of hotness-love.
Then, one day, the bottles started disappearing! Somebody had found my MRE stash and was pilfering Tabasco!
Couldn’t have that, so I had to hide them. I took a canvas bag that had a Velcro closure and an eyelet for a small lock and stuffed all the bottles I had left – I counted 72 of them – into the bag. I couldn’t just leave the bag of Tabasco in the bins; someone would get a bolt cutter. So I zip-tied the locked bag to a spare equipment rack. This was the test-station rack, where we tested equipment before installed the stuff on the aircraft. The rack was not “air-worthy”; it couldn’t be used on an aircraft due to it needing some repairs. It wasn’t going anywhere, my bag was hidden, all was good.
A few days later, I came to work to recover a jet that was landing and noticed the test station rack was gone! I called my friend who was in charge of the morning shift and asked what happened to it.
“We had a problem with the system on [aircraft tail number] 88 and had to swap racks to get the jet up on time. Just work on the rack we pulled out of 88 and use that for the new test station rack.
“Didn’t you notice anything WRONG with the test station rack?!” I sputtered incredulously.
“Nah. Worked great!”
“But it wasn’t signed off as ready to fly!”
“I signed it off. It looked good to me.”
/click
OMG, we just sent a U-2 over Baghdad with a locked bag of Tabasco sauce bottles strapped in the wing…
“Inbound, 88! All recovery personnel prepare for inbound!” came the call over the loudspeakers. And land the jet did. There was no indication of 1oz Tabasco-sized bottle-holes in the wing, or I’d still be in prison to this day.
The pilot was debriefed, the aircraft de-fueled and inspected. No word about the aircraft being unbalanced or suffering from Tabasco-induced drag. Normal flight, no problems, put it to bed.
I didn’t go to bed.
After everything was quiet, I accessed my equipment rack and found a happily strapped-in and locked bag, right where I expected. Sliced the tie-straps, put the bag in my cargo pocket, sealed the jet back up, got a crew chief to sign off the panel removal and installation, and went back to my office.
Dialed the combination to the lock, opened the bag, all the bottles were there…
No Tabasco sauce. All the bottle were empty.
Somehow, at altitude, the Tabasco evaporated or boiled or was teleported to another plane of existance. These little bottles were sealed, but apparently not vapor-proof.
I gave them out as Christmas presents, along with a little placard:
“This bottle of Tabasco served our country proudly over the skies of Baghdad. It gave its flavor for your freedom.”
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that’s an amazing story
If there wasn’t a Mrs BRK, I’d have to marry you man. I am still giggling over that story….
I normally read you for all the lovely hunter things I learn, but I just love the Airman stories. Please don’t stop writing them.
that was awsome man, truely awsome.
(yes i know i spell “awsome” wrong, been doing it for years. kind of a trade mark of mine
)
[...] Original post by BigRedKitty [...]
Whats does MRE stand for?
That is awesomesauce!
Innonexess, Meals Ready to Eat (MRE)
Stephenn (USN Ret)
…but… but… what the HELL happened to the sauce?!
Wow, I missed this story, because I was all caught up in Orcapalooza. Very funny.
I have a story of my own about MREs, or at least military food. One year I was working an insane job, and my husband was house-keeping and caring for the two kids, and when the kids were at school, he would work on his ‘junk’, stuff he bought at auctions, and later resold. We got a lot of strange things in the house, when folks sold boxes of stuff from their attics.
One day I came home to lunch, and after I ate, he asked how it was. I said OK, but the meat was a little strange. He said the meat had come out of tins that had been tinned for soldiers during the Korean war (this was around 1986)…
There is another story, involving a hideous toothache on a Sunday, and we lived out in the country, no nearby emergency room even…
To my rescue came my husband with a bottle of morphine, labeled 1929. I took that morphine in tiny drops, when it hit my tongue, I was off floating in lala land, absolute heaven, with no pain in the entire universe.
BRK, ever had the misfortune of eating the hot dog MRE (aka: 5 Fingers of Death)?
I love those Tabasco bottles…and sadly, I enjoyed MREs, as well.
Can you legally buy those anywhere? (not civilian knock-off crap)
BRK,
I love your Airman stories, I was in the army for more then a few years, reading your stories brings back great memories. Love your style of writting, just wish I could have gotten away with the same amount of sh*t as you did!
Sileo
Hey what was wrong with the 5 fingers of death, I was more of a Chili Mac man in my day. Beef stew was really good to. Oh and I might have found some of that tabasco in Baghdad back in 2003
I am really hungry right about now and havn’t gone to the grocery store in a while. MREs and tobasco sound really good right now.
I grew up about an hour from where they make the nectar of the gods that is True Tobasco. We used to take semi-annual field trips there when I was a wee tyke. Having been fed Tobasco almost since I was weaned I had built up a tolerance to it. I used to down those little bottles as a joke to make the other kids freak out.
Ahhh… making friends was so much easier in fourth grade.
“Wanna see something stupid?!”
Sadly, I think most people missed this story, having gotten caught up in the Orcapalooza survey.
Grainger: I’ve seen them for sale in military surplus stores locally, and on websites. I even bought a pack of heaters and a ‘random’ set (that ‘happened’ to all be hot dogs) of five off Ebay for 20$ just for the hell of it. I couldn’t quite work up the nerve to try them, though, and seeing ‘five fingers of death’ above, I think I’m glad.
Just put ‘MRE’ into Google and lots of stuff appears. Not sure how many of them are real military stuff, tho.
/hunterbrag
My hunter, in her mostly blue and green ‘of the Ass’ clownsuit came in first in damage done in AV yesterday. I’m rather proud of myself. AND no deaths, a personal first.
[...] up to back in the back. Heals are going to sleep, fireballs are all over the place, the hunter is sublimating Tobasco sauce and the rogue is going “lol dodge tank!” just before dying to a critical strike called [...]
Great story, keep it up BRK!!!
You should send this story to the folks at tabasco. I’m sure they would love to hear about it.
@ bayonet… considering his readership there is a good chance they have seen this by now… and for the evaporation. @ the flight ceiling of a U2 there is something like 10% of the pressure or less than what we have at sea level. that combined with the low temp would probably be enough to unseal the bottle (through bottle shrinkage etc). At that point it probably would have flash boiled/frozen and then sublimated away.
I can’t tell from the picture, but is there any of the solids left in the bottle?
Then again what do I know I’m just a simple dwarf
The pic in this post is not of our hand; it’s a generic pic from the Internet. We can’t find our stash of bottles. They’re in the closet… somewhere.
Still amusing as all hell. i guess U2’s are hardened against mild acids like vinegar… damn it I got my head into science mode… :::goes off to look up calculations on air density etc to figure out if the water would have boiled:::
can’t find the right equations right now, but looking at what i could find. its about 33mm mercury @ 70,000 feet (listed operational ceiling of a U2 from Wiki) and assuming the bottles started out near 100F (you did say it was the middle east after all) they would be at about 305k when they went up to altitude… Yeah the sauce would have boiled away, then likely sublimated the rest of the remaining water once it froze. same reason that the Pilot flies in a pressure suit. blood boils at body temp that high up… still gave me some amusing research for a boring work day =)… I wonder if I still have that vacuum chamber about…. could test it ::goes rummaging through old test equipment::
/clap
Another Monday morning brighten up by Airman Howell’s story.
I still have a couple of MREs from my last time in the field… Beef Stew (a personal favorite) and BBQ Pork Rib (don’t remember trying that one before). It was always fun when everyone would hunker down for a meal and we would start trading MRE stuff… I would always go for the jalapeño cheese spread.
BTW, Tabasco isn’t in all MREs now. Some still have it but others have red pepper.
One other thing… MRE bombs are fun.
That was quite amusing I must admit. How someone would not have noticed that seems beyond me but then again I have a hard time visualizing everything here.
Although it still seems amazing how the fellow who ordered the MREs didn’t know/check before making hte order, I can’t even begin to imagine trying to explain THAT one with a straight face.
@Innonexess: coulda sworn we called them Meals Rejected by Ethiopians, but it’s been a while since I was in the army reserve…