G-Rations

The Marines are looking to spice up their MREs.

About 150 years ago, at the mid-point of the

American Civil War, an aspiring poet from a Union regiment sent a little piece of doggerel to a newspaper as a humorous way of describing life in the army. Among the verses was this one about his daily field rations:

The soldier's fare is very rough,
The bread is hard, the beef is tough;
If they can stand it, it will be,
Through love of God, a mystery.

At that time, the army marched rather uneasily on its stomach with rations consisting of thick hard crackers called hardtack (which troops only half-jokingly considered to be hard enough to stop a bullet), some salt beef or pork, beans, sugar, salt and coffee.

Fast forward in United States military history and you'll hear veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam talking about their K or C-rations -- meals contained in tin cans that were legendary for their ubiquitous blandness and need of a can opener.

In the 1980s, the Army began to experiment with vacuum sealing its rations to make them...