What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

Nearly six years ago, I began to write my mother’s life story. She was 97 years old at the time and fortunately, she retained her memories quite well. While writing her history, I relied on her to answer my questions and it required opening a lot of doors to the past and behind most of those doors my father was there.

So, I realized his story would also have to be told. He died in 2000 and I had missed the opportunity to get his story first hand. The little I knew were from stories he told around the dining room table and at family gatherings. Just bits and pieces stayed with me, so writing his story was much more difficult.

My parents were children of the Great War— World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and World War II. The lessons they learned as children and young adults were often painful and lasting, influencing their future.

My father, James William McCarter, was born of teenage parents in 1919. His father left him and his mother when the he was only five. His mother died of Type 1 diabetes when he was 12. A little boy thrust into the adult world as the Depression began to tighten its grip on the world. Left at the doorstep of an aging grandmother and aunt with many hungry mouths to feed themselves, James(Jim) would be left without compassion, hardly any education, to live hand-to-mouth to become an adult with his own grit and without direction or future.

On a hot day in August of 1940, Jim, now age 21, working on a farm, living with a friend and his mother near Cherry Valley, Arkansas, made a decision that he was going to join the military. He asked the farmer for some money, telling him he had to go to a dentist to have a tooth pulled. He got the money, made his way to Jonesboro, Ark. to the closest recruiting station and volunteered. He made the bold move to find a future possibly better than his past.

His life up to this point was one of turmoil and the military looked like a place he could find some stability. Volunteers for the military in August of 1940 were in a unique position as the United States was still neutral and only supporting the British and French military by sending surplus ships and supplies. My father had no formal training before being thrust into adult responsibilities at age 12. What did he have to offer the military?

He was given the job of cook, code 060(1) in the military. Did he know how to cook? Did he get training in the military to be a cook? Some, maybe. Regardless, this was his job from 1940 until his honorable discharge in July, 1945.

According to my father’s records online at the United States Archives(2), he is enlisted not in the United States Army, but the Puerto Rican Department. Since we were not in a declared war, the United State’s military could only protect their homeland and territories. He would serve nearly three years as part of the Coastal Artillery Corps or Army Mine Planter Service in Panama Canal Zone. This group was responsible for guarding the highly vulnerable and valuable Panama Canal from attack by hostile forces.(3)

He enlisted August 29, 1940 and by October, 1940 he was in Panama when the United States imposed a draft anticipating the need for troops in case we were drawn into war. On December 7, 1941, our Pacific fleet of ships and carriers based in then territory, the Hawaiian Islands, was attacked and we were at war.

Feeding the troops who were located on our soil or in foreign areas was essential. Napoleon famously said, “An army travels on its stomach.” Napoleon’s army was the first to record the use of field rations which consisted of soldiers carrying wine bottles filled with soup preserved using an early method of canning.(4)

Records exist about field rations for our troops dating back to the Revolutionary War, but it was World War II when rations were refined to their present day form.

When the United States first entered World War II, the war department had to rely on their small supply of rations and those of the British. Americans were not used to eating British rations which relied on dried fish and meat, biscuits and hardly any spices. Soon, the United States began to prepare its own rations.

Military cooks and chefs prepared meals that could be eaten on the field of battle, cold canned meats and stews. Soldiers complained about the quality and a can was invented that self-heated or to be heated by Sterno. But what about the rest of the military?

The Air Force needed specialized rations that could be eaten in airplanes or by paratroopers. Women in the military complained that they did not want the heavy meat rations of the men. Chocolate was also added to rations. At first, chocolate bars wrapped in aluminum foil and paper was often melted when the soldier got them. So, in 1941 Mars Candies developed our current day M&M candies, “Melts in your mouth, not on our hands” as an answer to the problem.(5)

Rations were specialized for the military who were fighting in the desert, the jungle, in POW camps and for refugees. Cigarettes also became a part of the World War II ration packages. The well known phrase, “Smoke ‘em, if you got ‘em” came from the inclusion of the cigarettes. Over the course of the war, rations changed entirely and today’s rations remain almost the same as then.(6)

Rations were essential to soldiers on the move, but the real food was in temporary camps and permanent bases. As a cook, my father worked in both. For three years of his service, he cooked in an organized base kitchen with standard ovens, refrigeration and regular supplies. Several pictures of my father do show him holding a turkey or next to a table full of soldiers as they chow down.

By 1943, he was back in the United States where his status changed to regular Army and was trained to handle a rifle while still a cook. In September of 1944, three months after the Normandy Invasion D Day, June 6, he was sent as a replacement soldier to Germany just as the United States was advancing to Berlin. His stories sometimes mentioned the Battle of the Bulge, December, 1944, and his love of General Patton. Whether he was actually in the Battle of the Bulge will never be answered, but he was in Germany as a cook in a field kitchen.

Field kitchens were portable often installed on the back of open trucks. These kitchens had a gasoline powered oven, a water supply, and whatever meat, vegetables and breads available. From these kitchens, cooks were able to prepare meals for soldiers near the battle fields. As one General once commented, off the record of course, the Germans and Japanese would have known where the next battle was going to take place by following the food supply trucks. Freshly cooked food was a welcome sight for battle weary soldiers. Most pictures of these soldiers sharing a makeshift table and chairs show them with smiling faces.(7)

What experience my father had cooking prior to the military was probably one of helping prepare meals in someone’s home or cooking over a camp fire small game he had killed. His cooking experiences in the military did not lead to a career in the culinary industry, but he did cook for our family on special occasions and for church dinners.

On July 31st, 1945, James W. McCarter, number 17 010 229, was discharged from the Army at Jefferson Barracks, Mo. and given his pay for service of four years, 10 months, and eight days, $422.18.

Using online sources and my memories of stories told around our dining room table, I have been able to write, “What did you do in the War, Daddy?”

World War II veterans are dying at a disturbing rate, some 5,000 a day. If you have relatives in this age group, you should ask questions and get answers before it is too late. Luckily, I had the records from the online United States Archives available and copies of my father’s discharge papers. World War II records were partly destroyed in a fire at the storage facility in St. Louis, Mo.

Fortunately, there are online official interviews of quartermasters who were responsible for supplies during World War II, interviews with officers and even cooks, pictures of the fort and bunkers built to protect the Panama Canal and pictures of faces of soldiers who shared tables filled with food cooked, possibly, by my father.

Historians almost always write of battles, generals, and the number of those killed and wounded in these battles, but what about one of the four essentials of war, the food?

Cited

1. From the copy of his official discharge papers

2. Access to Archival Databases(AAD). The National Archives. Electronic Army Serial Number Merged file Ca, 1938-1946. 06/01/2002-09/30/2002. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

3. Wikipedia Contributors. “United States Army Coast Artillery Corps”. “Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia”. “Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia”. 25 Jul. 2014. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

4. Glatz, Julianne. “Illinois Times”. “Canning food, from Napoleon to now”. 03 Jun. 2010. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

5. Bellis, Mary. About.com. “History of M&M Chocolate-Forrest Mars”. NP. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

6. Wikipedia Contributors. “United States Military rations”. “Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia”. 20 Jul.2014. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

7. Littlejohn, Major General Robert M. G. US Army Quartermaster Foundation, Fort Lee, Virginia. “The Quartermaster Review”. “The Food Situation in the European Theatre of Operation”. Jan.-Feb. 1944. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.