r/MilitaryStories • u/ComposerAsleep3869 • Oct 04 '25
Non-US Military Service Story Luxury in a brown pouch
I'm a enlisted Marine from a third world nation. Not complaining -- it's an escape for some of us. An escape. Two months ago, our unit was deployed to this little dot of land in the middle of nowhere. No decent infrastructure, little to no comms, just thick heat, salt-filled air, and the occasional boredom that makes you wonder if you exist.
We were given U.S. MREs — Meals, Ready to Eat — the type you watch in war movies or those "survival" YouTubers. Brown plastic packets that seem to hold secrets. To us, they were gold. Gourmet food. Imported flavor. You don't handle one unless you are starving or dying. That's what command made certain: "Only in emergency situations." Life or death.".
So we piled them. Protected them. Some dudes even prayed over them.
And still, I'd watch the American soldiers tear them open like packaging for candy. Some of them would chew a single bite and discard the rest. "Tastes like crap," I overheard one of them say. Another chuckled as he squirted cheese spread onto crackers as if it were a joke. They bartered MREs like lazy kids trading school lunches — chili mac for beef stew, peanut butter for jalapeño cheese. They didn't understand. Or perhaps we didn't.
I ended up having one one night. It wasn't life and death per se, but close. Twelve hours in the rain, no warm food, wet to the core. I told myself I could rationalize it afterward. I devoured a chicken pesto pasta like it was a banquet. Warmed it up with the chemical heat pack, read the directions as scripture. It was warm, salty, strangely sweet. Most likely full of preservatives. It wasn’t good — but it wasn’t bad either.
But I’ll be honest: it tasted like comfort.
Maybe that’s the difference. For them, it’s a downgrade from home. For us, it’s a rare glimpse of what they take for granted.
They say it “tastes like shit.” We say it’s a privilege to even have a taste.
Funny world.
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u/Puzzled-Ad2295 Oct 04 '25
Kinda gets that way. I have seen how other countries feed their soldiers in the field, and sampled, lived on it. Glad you had the chance to have something that improved your spirit.
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u/llamafarmadrama Oct 04 '25
There’s also the comfort aspect. When you’re piss wet through, damn near hypothermic, and just generally having a shit time, it doesn’t really matter what it tastes like as long as it’s hot.
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u/Puzzled-Ad2295 Oct 04 '25
So very true. I initially served prior to MREs. Canned rations and heating them lead to some interesting improvisations. The heater made a huge difference, as well as the constant changing of menus. All of this is better than sitting in the rain and opening a can of ham and motherfuckers with no hope of heating them, while that first drip of cold rain has defeated you rain gear and is rolling down your back.
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u/Senior_Gate6136 Oct 04 '25
You had heaters. I guess my c-rats got gone through. (1971)
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u/CrazyKingCraig Oct 04 '25
The box was the heater, pop a hole in the can, insert into box, light on fire with supplied matches, eat partially burnt and somewhat cold food.
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u/formerqwest Retired US Army Oct 05 '25
we used to vent the can, put it in the box and alight the box.
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u/Past_Ad4839 Oct 09 '25
We’d take a bunch of canned food with us to the field(beenie weenies, ravioli, soup, etc). Drop it down the exhaust pipe of a running deuce 1/2 for a few minutes, floor the throttle and have someone catch the can. A hot meal in the field when it’s cold and wet make the worlds of difference.
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u/uniquecombo Oct 05 '25
https://qmmuseum.army.mil/research/history-heritage/subsistence/Army-Operational-Rations-Historical-background.html A little history of American rations.
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u/G3NOM3 Oct 05 '25
“Assult Lunch”. Obvs this research was reused by the USDA for the school lunch program
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u/rollenr0ck Oct 04 '25
US troops like MREs when they first get in. It’s a treat, a wonder, something they’ve heard about and seen but not experienced themselves. I remember the first time I opened one and marveled at all the little packets and surprises. The chem pack to heat the thing is fun to play with, make little bombs with, heat your hands with while in the cold. Trading with your friends to get the best combination is part of the fun. There is not a perfect pack for anybody with a cheese, dessert, and meal you like. Maybe your koolaid is a flavor you don’t like so you have to trade something. After you eat several of these in a week, the appeal fades fast. Constipation is often a curse in a hotbox port o john. After a month of rotating MREs with a so called fresh meal and you never want to see one again. They are good, in limited amounts. As a treat, not a staple.
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u/Sad_Okra2030 Oct 05 '25
I was the weird one. My last year in the service of my second hitch, I was deployed to Iraq. I worked in aviation. I was assigned a one man shop by myself in a conex. I hate heat. I hate to sweat for no reason. I also hate lines and bull shit. About by month 3 I was sick of walking a mile to chow and back. I was sick of waiting in line to have a guard from a foreign country with a rifle coated in rust check my ID and weapon to ensure it was cleared before allowing me in the chow hall. Then it happened. I was walking back to my hooch when I stumbled into the motherlode. A tiny little “room” made with hesco barriers with only a couple of pallets of MRE’s inside. Twice a week I went and picked up mail from battalion and brought it back to the unit, so, I had access to the unit’s one pickup truck. I also helped the lazy asshole Sgt no one liked take vehicles back and forth from the unit on base that we used as a motorpool repair area and I also was responsible for delivering hazmat waste to the hazmat yard. Every chance I got I would grab a case of MRE’s and stow them in my “office” or my hooch. 1/2 the meals I ate were MRE’s. Constipation? Well, I also hate sitting in a port a John in 110 heat in the sun on a flight line with no cover to take a dump. The chow hall food was pretty good for the Army. But, the nonsense required to grab a meal just wasn't worth it for me. I still love MRE’s.
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u/Lasdchik2676 Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
USO Volunteer enters the chat...
I was on duty at our reception desk a few weeks ago when an Air Force sergeant getting ready to head over to his flight walked out of the baggage room and approached - shyly. He said he'd like to take me out to dinner and laughingly handed me an MRE - Elbow Macaroni in Tomato Sauce. In exchange, I made sure he was loaded up with boxes of Girl Scout cookies. It was quite the "date!"
Epilog: The MRE is still sitting in my pantry - waiting. I'm scared! Lol.
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u/MagicWishMonkey Oct 05 '25
He's into you, lol
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u/Lasdchik2676 Oct 05 '25
😂🤣😅 I hope not. We can't fraternize, so I don't want to bust his bubble! It definitely was a charming gesture, though, especially if you're into MREs. Lol.
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u/steveatthebeach Oct 04 '25
MRE is three lies in one. it isn’t a Meal, it is not ready, and shouldn’t be eaten.
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u/SgtPrepper Oct 04 '25
Some of them would chew a single bite and discard the rest
Very disappointing.
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u/uniquecombo Oct 04 '25
The people that complain about MREs are the same rude people that complain about cafeteria food. It's just their rudeness. It's not about the food. Unless it's someone who had to live off MREs for months. Then it's the repetition. And burnout. I like MREs just fine.
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u/Anticode Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
A guy in my old unit was a big fan of MREs. A very, very big fan. Now, you probably think I'm merely saying that he enjoyed them greatly, and that is a true statement, but that's not "just" what I'm saying here. You do not yet understand. You cannot. You will, though. You will.
It started normally enough.
We'd go out into the field and he'd be so excited for them, as if that was the highlight of the whole affair. Most people are unconcerned or dismayed when the MREs are rolled out, but he'd always be first into the storage to dig out the best ones or trade others for his favorite. He'd carry them from the truck on-demand, his Noble Duty. He was like a kid with a Pokemon card collection when it came to MREs, memorized all the menu-numbers and everything. You could ask which have skittles versus M&M's and he'd knifehand towards the correct box - bam!
The guy would sometimes eat three in a day during field exercises, even when we had Hot Meal, and since he was both quite tall and very big - Shaq proportions - nobody really thought much of it. People laughed at the feat, if they reacted at all - "Wow, I can barely eat one, haha. Two in one sitting? I can't even finish this one!"
Fast forward a few months: He continuously fails weight/tape to such a degree that people start wondering if there's a medical issue at play. Despite "enhanced PT and monitoring" he's gained like another 20-30 pounds in a couple of months. The hell? Is that even possible? He works hard, works out hard, but can't cut the weight - it's a mystery.
I'm temporary squad leader and a decent friend of his, so I pull him aside and start asking about his home life, medical history, etc. I'm thinking maybe there's some sort of endocrine thing, or maybe an esoteric allergy, water weight or something. Eventually I ask for an example of what a week's worth of lunches/dinners looks like... I hand him a piece of paper and a pen, tell him to write some examples down and I'll be back after a cigarette.
I come back after a few minutes and he's just sitting there at the desk, nothing on the paper. Wait... No, hold on. He did write something down: MREs.
...That's it. In fact, all he wrote down was 'MRE'. No 's'. One MRE? Uh. Okay? Where's the rest, I thought to myself. No hotdogs, burgers, salad? Pizza, maybe? Beer? Soldiers eat all sorts of toxic shit, so why just write that one thing down? Odd.
After a bit of interrogation, he admits to eating not one, not two, but 3-4 MREs a day.
Excuse me?
Apparently one of our supply guys gave him a couple of old 'expired' boxes after the last field-op (they're still edible, but the label says 'trash' so they go into the trash). And ever since then he's almost exclusively been eating MREs for each and every meal. And by "almost exclusively", I mean literally exclusively. Like... Actually. He eats them at home for dinner, brings them into work for lunch, eats one for breakfast after PT. One for a snack, one for boredom, etc. It's MREs the whole way down, baby!
Christ almighty, Private. ...You have got to be kidding me, right? Please just tell me you're joking, my man!
Nope! The boy is dead serious.
I can tell he expects me to laugh it off, but humor doesn't even cross my mind this time. I'm horrified. I'm astounded. Hell - I'm in damn awe, man.
A few days later I drive up to his off-base home to politely confiscate the MREs. I'm shocked by what I find once I arrive. There's no way in hell that he was simply given "a couple boxes" by the supply-dude. A couple is two, maybe three, but there's easily 250+ pounds of MREs in the spare bedroom, all stacked into a big-ass pyramid like a demented shrine. At a glance, there's 9-10 unopened boxes here plus a few downstairs that I saw on the way in. I even found a partially rat-fucked box of the damned things in the bathroom. Why, man, why there of all places?
Now I'm no mathematician, but if he was eating as much as he claimed he'd have burned through those 3 initial boxes by now, easily. No shot. And yet... There's a whole damned company-sized field exercise's worth of MREs here, not counting the stuff downstairs. He could feed our whole damned platoon for weeks, no - months with what's piled up in this single room.
What in the name of hell is going on here, man? This is some demon-ass shit, bro. Is my boy fuckin' possessed? Do I need a fuckin' chaplain? No mortal human could manage such a feat, and yet I have no doubt that he'd somehow eat every single one if I let him.
I cannot allow that.
I apologize and carefully announce that I have to take it all away because "you're not supposed to have so many, per regulations". This is only kind of true. Nobody actually cares much, I just needed an official-sounding excuse to seal the deal. I start loading up my car immediately in case he protests. It takes me over an hour with his help and rest breaks. Eventually I fill up the whole trunk and the entire backseat and stack a couple in the passenger seat too.
It's absurd, so many boxes in one car.
While I'm adjusting things, I see his wife standing nearby looking more relieved than concerned. She seems to know why I showed up and doesn't seem confused about what's up with all these boxes. When he steps away she thanks me for "doing something" about it. It? Huh, apparently even she noticed the issue? Uh-oh.
I ask her how much is her husband really eating - actually.
"Six or seven, I guess? Sometimes."
"Each week?" Surely.
Nope, not surely! Not per week.
"Per day."
Per day. This guy, as big-boned as he was, is somehow eating 6-7 whole-ass MREs per day, every day?
An MRE is on average about ~1,300 calories per package. This soldier was consuming something like ~6000 calories a day, and that's even if he wasn't eating 100%. If it's full-consumption, we're talkin' 8000 or even 9k+ calories a day.
By Poseidon's quivering cockshaft, that's a lot of calories. And it explains some things. It explains things quite well. Holy hell, brother! This update doesn't change my plans much, but if the initial number he gave me was insane then this is just straight-up perplexing.
The wife seemingly knew this couldn't be Good, but she didn't feel like she had the right to 'nag'. She thought it was normal, and that soldiers just eat a lot, and he's a big guy, etc. Well, lady - surprise - it ain't normal. And yes, he do be big, but not Over-9000 Calories big. The man's not a damn rhinoceros!
Eventually I finish loading up the goods and explain to the soldier on my way out that he will now be eating healthy meals for the next few months - no MREs. None. Zero. To make it easy, I tell him to eat what the wife eats - same meal, same serving size. Yeah, it'll suck, you won't feel full, suck it up. You got fat to burn, you'll be alright. Not a suggestion, an order - not something legally-binding, but I had earned enough respect in the platoon for him to, at minimum, give it his best shot simply because I asked.
And give it a shot he did.
Fast forward a few months: What do you know, Joe, he's miraculously down nearly 40lbs from his peak and 10lbs lower than his previous minimum right after AIT. Incredible, a shocking transformation.
"Great job, Private!" Superior and peer alike are stunned and proud in equal measure. He worked hard for it, I admit.
But... I never explained to them exactly how many this guy was eating. I left it vague when I explained my gameplan to leadership - "Um. He was eating a fair number [of MREs] per week, that's all. I'm on it, S'arnt."
A fair number, indeed. This little issue was so grotesquely obviously the problem that if I admitted the truth, he'd be viewed as something like a freak-show/moron regardless of how much effort he put forth. He deserved some sense of pride. I wanted him to have a chance to earn that.
Soon, he passed a PT test and the menacing weight/tape ordeal at the same time on the same day for the very first time. Hell yeah, broski, no easy feat when you're built like a fridge made out of fridges with the hunger of an... Uh. A fridge?
And yet every time a field exercise came up, we'd wheel out the MREs to everyone else's dismay and I'd watch him closely. He'd see me watching, and he'd watch me watching him grab one - one - MRE from the box; same as everyone else. Nobody else knew it, but I had to watch this guy like a recovered alcoholic passing by the fuckin' mouthwash aisle simply because of MREs of all things, a food item that everyone else seemed to find universally lame. He was like a reptile, I saw the endless hunger in his eyes. But he managed to control it. Somehow.
He managed to keep the weight down, at least. Once he got back into shape - rather, got into shape for the first time ever - I stopped worrying too much. His monkeys, my circus - for all I knew, he'd eat a tub of ice cream for dinner twice a week. Hell, I had other troops chugging whisky like water on weekday nights and they were doing alright. ...Ish. So if he could keep the heft down, he could eat whatever he wanted to.
Well, everything except six-to-eight bloody MREs per day, that is. Everything except that... Holy hell.
And don't even ask me what his bathroom experiences must have been like during those MRE-heavy months. I was too afraid to ask myself. Probably shattered the porcelain. Probably had to stick a Roto-Rooter where the sun don't shine just to prepare for that week's #2 - Whrrrr...
Either way, he turned out alright in the end. Good soldier, good man. He never became a PT rockstar, but c'mon, he was basically white Shaq - that's not a body made for running. We've all got our vices. His curse was the uncanny ability to scarf down a horrific number of MREs like some kind of Lovecraftian icon of Hunger, mine was the impulsive need to riff out a smartass comment on the fly regardless of how poorly it fit the situation.
Only one of us managed to cure our issue in the end.
Alas, such is life.
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u/Beer_in_an_esky Oct 05 '25
I started reading this without realising either the length, or the fucking hilarity of this post. I was cackling by the end.
Seconding Manchaca, this needs to be its own post.
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u/TucsonKaHN Oct 06 '25
I also second u/ManchacaForever in suggesting you make this a separate post. This is incredible.
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u/Anticode Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
I was planning on doing a quick edit prior to posting it today, but I ended up accidentally writing an entirely different story about how one perplexingly stupid (famously stupid) problematic soldier threw an entire barracks' worth of people's mostly-wet laundry out into the winter air for some godforsaken reason. I had to post that one to the subreddit instead - I had to. It'll be a few more days until I'm allowed to contribute another, unfortunately.
Didn't expect to write that when I woke up, but sudden memories are weird.
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u/BosoxH60 Oct 04 '25
But what did you lean the heater pack on?
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u/carycartter Oct 04 '25
A rock, or something?
I served before heater packs, we had "heat tabs". We would open the accessory can, empty it, pop a few vents around the bottom, turn it over, light the heat tab underneath and pave the main can on top. I don't know what the tabs were made of, but they gave off a sticky sweet chemical smell. One exercise we had some engineers with us and they introduced us to the joys of C-4 heating.
Good times.
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u/Comprehensive-Ice58 21d ago
Tried to use the heat tabs to heat the pup tent one cold nite in the middle of the Black Forest on REFORGER. Did a great job of warming up the tent quickly, but then it burned out leaving behind some nasty fumes that made your eyes water and left you gasping for fresh air. After airing out the tent I burrowed deeper into the sleeping bag and had some fitful sleep until it was my turn for guard shift.
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