I was hunkered down behind an M-60 machine gun in a sandbagged bunker just below the crest of a mountain in South Vietnam, staring into the descending darkness down a slope that had been denuded by napalm and Agent Orange, thinking: "Man, I wish I had a pizza."
That was, of course, out of the question. I had to make do with the C-rations in my pack — the dreaded and vile ham and lima beans — or maybe one of the rancid bologna sandwiches on stale white bread that a runner sometimes brought to the Marines manning the 1st Marine Division perimeter north of Danang at night.
So imagine my surprise now, 44 years later, at an Associated Press story that said the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center in Massachusetts has made a pizza combat rations meal. Researchers at the center say this particular type of pizza can sit around for three years without being refrigerated or frozen — unopened, I assume — and still be edible.
"Edible," though, is an unenthusiastic term that covers a lot of ground. But that is the nature of military meals designed to be eaten under extreme conditions; taste must necessarily take a back seat to nutritional value.
I have to admit that I did not mind most C-ration meals during my time in the Marine Corps. That may be because I am an uncritical eater, or maybe I'm just adaptable. Either way, that flexibility helped me then and has served me well in civilian life by making me the perfect dinner guest: As long as it's dead, there aren't many dishes I won't eat, and enjoy.
I must have sampled most of the varieties of C-rations at one time or another and I checked with my colleague and fellow Vietnam veteran Terry Brown to jog my memory about what they were. We came up with: beef stew, ham and lima beans, ham and eggs, spaghetti (maybe with some kind of meatballs; I can't remember), chicken and noodles. There were probably others, but they are lost in the fog of war and memory. Favorites among the side dishes were any kind of fruit, pound cake, crackers and peanut butter, cocoa and, speaking for myself, the three-packs of cigarettes, usually Pall Malls.
There was a rumor at the time that our C-ration meals were left over from World War II. That seemed to me to be stretching the limits of technology and humanity, though. Korea was my guess.
The developers of the combat pizza said they had a difficult time formulating a recipe that had staying power as well as flavor. The AP story said pizza was considered to be the holy grail of their research efforts, because that's what always tops the wish list of foods requested by troops. That also is new. In my day, nobody asked or, I am sure, cared what we wanted to eat.
Moisture was the biggest problem, the researchers said, because it made the dough soggy and encouraged the growth of bacteria, which would taste bad and, more importantly, take troops out of combat by sickening them. A casualty is a casualty, after all, no matter its source.
The pizza meal has yet to prove itself under fire but the developers said, the AP reported, that its taste is comparable to that of pizza turned out by any neighborhood pizzeria.
Hmm. Maybe so. Then again, that claim may soon join other legendary military whoppers such as:
• Just sign here and I'll guarantee it;
• Volunteers will be rewarded;
• We'll be pulling out of here by tomorrow at the latest;
• This operation will be a piece of cake;
• I'll pay you back on payday, I promise.
War has been called the continuation of policy by other means (Carl von Clausewitz). A more down and dirty view holds that those who fight modern wars die like dogs, for no good reason (Ernest Hemingway). And it has been said that there was never a good war or a bad peace (Benjamin Franklin).
While all these views are true, war will always be with us, because the essence of humanity is flawed, probably fatally. So, having accepted — or at least stopped questioning — this fatal flaw, we turn our attention away from war's inhumanity and try to make it slightly less horrible for those who do the fighting through creature comforts such as the Meal Ready to Eat — Pizza.
Pizza for the troops is at best a distraction from death, danger and discomfort. But beneath the memory of the good times that the pizza combat meal is meant to evoke lurks the bitter taste of our failure to overcome an age-old human defect.
As Plato observed, only the dead have seen the end of war.