Food topped the list of sources of unrelieved misery on the Highway in 1942.
From day one, everybody, officers and enlisted, white and black, everybody ate C-rations. Gray boxes, C-rations had contents that resembled food you might have had before, strange things that looked sort of like chocolate, olive drab cans with coagulated contents that might be edible if you could heat it up. Canned fruit actually wasn’t bad.
Everything that wasn’t a c-ration—milk, eggs, potatoes and vegetables—came canned or powdered. Powdered vegetables tasted like cardboard—but with less flavor.
The soldiers saved their special scorn—and their sense of humor–for the infamous canned meats that none of them ever forgot. Spam topped the list. Years after the fact, the mere mention of the word “spam” nauseated Tim Timberlake of the 93rd. Rust of the 18th insisted that had the army only thought of it, they could have paved the entire highway with discarded spam sandwiches.
Cpl. Anthony “Bobby Lee” Mouton of the 93rd fondly remembered corned beef hash as “shit on a shingle”. The men of the 18th remembered the same corned beef hash—they called it silage. Tim of the 93rd reserved the name “shit on a shingle” for creamed chipped beef on toast.
“Big John” Erklouts of the 340th remembered, “There were two foods we classified as battery acid, lemonade powder and chili con carne, the worst food I ever tasted. It was so hot you couldn’t eat it. The Army medics put a halt to it.”
Nearly as roundly hated as spam, Vienna Sausages were everywhere despised as “Yukon Shrimp”.
The quartermasters sent bread to the regiments stuffed in mattress covers—trying to keep it fresh. Mattress covers or no, it arrived so hard, the cooks had to saw off slices.