Field Exercise Three - Like Kids at the Lunch Table

It smells like plastic, but I'd eat anything this point.


I laid on the slope of a dirt pile covered in vines and prickle bushes. The muzzle of my weapon was pointed out from the foliage to the road. The trees offered good concealment for our security position after the 'movement to contact' drill. Although I was in the prone position looking out, I was glad to have stopped moving. Marching from sunrise into the late afternoon with so much weight drained me of energy. I was famished.

Staying behind my machine gun, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a snack from my  Meal Ready to Eat (MRE). My knife cut through the brown plastic and opened the top of the "Wheat Snack Bread". I bit into it and chewed slowly.

My God, that tastes amazing. I thought. It then occurred to me that I had not had a single thing to eat since we started moving at 3am this morning.

"Hey Brian." Said a whisper to my right.

Just through the branches was Lt. Switchblade. He is a scrappy little man with a quick wit. Raised in Georgia, his brown hair and staunch appearance resembled that of a southerner.  He possesses a very particular swagger when he walks, one that only a marine aviator would carry. However, you would not be able to see that strut today, as he carried the 450 rounds of ammunition for my machine gun.

"Sup dude." I whispered back.
"Yo, you got any thin' ya wanna trade for apple sauce?" He said.
"Umm... lemme look." I said as I began rummaging through the light brown plastic bag.
"let's see, I gota mocha cappuccino drink mix... thing. I don't like coffee. You wanna trade?" I said.
"You have any cheese n' crackers in there? I love that shit." He said
"Na, you're SOL on that." I said
"Damn.... ummmmm.... Alright, its better than nothin'. Toss it here."

We both threw the vacuum seal packages and rummaged through them quickly. I cut open the top of the small package and started to chow down on the apple sauce. It didn't taste much like apples. It was more like sugar and dense.... something else. But hey, it was energy.

After scarfing down that meal, I fished through my cargo pocket for another. I pulled it up and read the cardboard package for the main course. 'Jambalaya.' Damn, I thought, this stuff makes my stomach turn to rot.

To my right not far off in the bushes was Lt. Troublemaker. He leaned over his M203 grenade launcher chewing on a snack from his MRE as well. The tripod for the machine gun rested to his side.

"Hey Troublemaker" I whispered to him. He gave me a nod.
"You got anything you wanna trade for Jambalaya?" I asked
He looked through his choices he had left over.
"Chicken and noddles sound good to you?" He said
"Oh hell ya. That's my favorite." I said


I remember when I was a kid in grade school during lunch time. Lunch tables were the bargaining locations for any type of goodies you wanted. I specifically remember watching kids negotiate with one another for the snacks they brought in their paper bags or lunch boxes; Gushers for chocolate chip cookies, HiC for chocolate milk, potato chips for pringles. I never got far in the negotiations, as my mixed vegetables my mom packed me didn't fetch much more than a trade for... more mixed vegetables.

But as I chewed on what only tasted like chicken and noodles, I would rather take raw carrots or broccoli to gnaw on. The food in these MRE's are not really food; its just calories. One package of an MRE has about 2000 calories in them, which is enough to sustain a solider or marine with enough energy to do what he needs to get done. Yet despite how bad it tastes, everyone has their own preference on what bad things they want to eat.

And so we trade like kids at a lunch table. But instead, our weapons and the forest floor are now the plastic tables of the lunch room. This time, the lunches are pack by the government, not our mothers. Instead of looking for the snack with the most sugar, we look for the foods that provide the most calories or energy.

But somehow, you just can't take the little kid a the lunch table out of any of us, even if its with food from an MRE.



What I wouldn't do for a home made peanut butter and jelly sandwich.