China's MRE

Gollevainen, thanks for sharing. They say there are 3 ways to prepare food, the right way, the wrong way and the army way. The army way are generally resemble the wrong way.

The hats rule is about same for all army. Being in Australia, we don't have to endure -30c temperature. But we do have the opposites.. it can be incredibly hot and humid, yet cold, wet and miserable before the dawn(we normally only bring summer cloth to camps). Mess food is ok.. but as you said, it will look wonderful when one just come back from the woods. The reservelist here do have some advantages, some of our cook are professional chief in daily life. So occasionally, we get some decent food from the stores. Especially when HQ bring hot soup to the front line units.... it goes down sooooo well in the morning.

Any way.. I think even the might U.S. Army will lose to the Malay troops... 6 meal a day!! That is not soldier feeding... it is a pig farm! (appologies to any Malay supportor). I do have to say that I will enough a soldier's life there.:roll:

Lazzy digger

Gollevainen said:

oh, thanks...english slang is bit alien to me...

Well Finnish army food sucks...as it propaply do in every military. Tough there's two main variations in the food, the one eated in the mess and ones eaten in the woods...I'm must confess that there is few better things than messfood (regardless what it is) after exhausing days in the woods where you had to eat this unspeakble junk from "pakki" (every finnish soldiers personal field cup(?), sort a metal can or pot) in -30 degree whitout hat. ( finnish soldiers are not allowed to wear hats in the indoors, nor be whitout hat in outdoors, exept when eating, then it's stricly forbidden to wear any sort of hat...regardless what the temperature is...).

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Aaah...brings back memories...
During my recent stint at the tip of the spear that defends our independence i noticed that the food at the armoured brigade or what ever it is called nowadays after stupidly ditching their infantry, is actually quite good and you can take as much as you like!! Admittedly I ate only three meals there, so maybe I was lucky. We also ate once at Tikkakoski on our way back from rovajärvi. In Rovajärvi we were one of those lucky few that got most our food made at the main canteen in Heinuvaara. Since our technical maintaince company was "somewhat" understrenght we had loads of extra evening snacks which include barbaque sausages, pizzas (really!), riisifrutti, yoghurt, karjalan piirakoita (karelian paistry??) and various soups. If we only had some beer too. Also the mobile coffe/snack bar made a couple of stops near us per day. We ate munkkis like pigs. At least those of us in the HQ platoon. However we did not get any peasoup and pancakes

The worst thing is in the gungroup, it almoust everytime was so, that when the shootings started, ofcourse the meal arrived at the same time. As there must be all the time at least three person in the Gun, few guys must fecth all the food to the rest of the group...and they usually where always the same dudes..so there they went to the command post (the food always comes to the battery command posts, never straight away to the firing platoons) wich usually is about 1 km away from the guns...so you can quess if the food was never warm...tough you didn't have much time to moarn about it as you got only about 2 mins to eat the whole thing. Or if you wheren't fast enough you could leave the food on top of those various boxes laying around on the fire position...ques what happens when the gun is fired...hmm where did those pakki's went?
The food in the woods where made by fellow conscripts and it was more of a rule that the most lazyest and uncapaple ones got to be the "spade". So you can imagine the effort that they put on every meal...and all this was not helped by those urban legends and rumours that when we drove the 900 km from our base to the firing area to the longest and hardest firetraining camp, some "spade" suddenly got urgent need to go to the toilett, the cars didn't stop so he had to use the sole pots and dishes available...the food cans...and he didn't needed to take a leak....

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I was once assigned to a heavily understaffed supply platoon. Keeping a whole company plus an assigned at-platoon feed was not an easy task. Those cooks got actually quite hard work and long days if they have to make stuff from scratch. Luckily it was winter which made keeping good hygene a bit easier.
Regarding eating out. I was mostly too tired to care much about taste. I just mashed everything togehter in the pakki and .... uuuuh...enjoyed.

In Rovajärvi we were one of those lucky few that got most our food made at the main canteen in Heinuvaara. Since our technical maintaince company was "somewhat" understrenght we had loads of extra evening snacks which include barbaque sausages, pizzas (really!), riisifrutti, yoghurt, karjalan piirakoita (karelian paistry??) and various soups. If we only had some beer too. Also the mobile coffe/snack bar made a couple of stops near us per day. We ate munkkis like pigs. At least those of us in the HQ platoon. However we did not get any peasoup and pancakes

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We also had quite good evening snacks...one thing that kept us sane...and the sotkuauto...(cantteencar?) was like charriot of angels...

Those cooks got actually quite hard work and long days if they have to make stuff from scratch. Luckily it was winter which made keeping good hygene a bit easier.

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Looking it afterwards i have much more respect to all those which we despied during the servicetime...

...but as pleasent and relaxing it is to relive those days..let's not forget the orginal topic and china....

lazzydigger said:

Hi Mr C. I was with Sydney Uni Regiment.

Mr G, how is the chow in Finnish army?

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I was in 4/3 RNSWR and then transfer 1HSB.

Food i love my food. WHat r u taking about Aussie Mess food is super excellent.

Wow, Mr C and lazzydigger, were you infantryman ???

Hi Rommel:

I was an infantryman. I am not sure about Mr C. He might be part of officer cadet.

lazzy digger

lazzydigger said:

Hi Rommel:

I was an infantryman. I am not sure about Mr C. He might be part of officer cadet.

lazzy digger

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Greeting lazzydigger

Happy to see that I'm not the lone footman around there. Where you a rifleman or a specialize soldier ???

Glad to see that u a grunt too. I just a good old humble grunt, didn't go specialize.

So how's the australian army ?? Is it hard or relax like us over here (at least for the reservist like me ) What's your service weapon in Autralia ?? Talk about your army, I'd like to see how australian infantry reserve are different of canadian infantry reserve.

Since we're on the topic of MRE's:



U.S. rejects Katrina meals, offers them to others

Mon Oct 17,12:12 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday offered needy countries more than 330,000 packaged meals donated by Britain to feed Hurricane Katrina victims but rejected due to a U.S. ban on British beef.
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State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the "Meals Ready to Eat," or MREs, had been held in a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, for more than a month after U.S. Agriculture Department officials said they could not be distributed in the United States because they contained British beef products.

"We are certainly, for our part, looking to dispose of these MREs that were offered in the spirit of friendship and charity. We are looking to dispose of them in the same way," Ereli told a State Department briefing.

The United States bans the import of products containing British beef because of fears of mad cow disease, a chronic, degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system of cattle.

An additional 33,000 MREs from Germany, Russia, Spain and France had also not been distributed to hurricane victims because of U.S. legal restrictions, Ereli said without elaborating.