Here’s what the mess served Navy shipmates on Christmas Days of the past

navytimes.com | Dec. 24, 2018 | Geoff Ziezulewicz

[Bull Snipe]

Thanks for the article. A couple of things about the way the Navy did thing. Up through the middle of WWII the Navy commissary system used a standard menue for the service.
Every ship, whether inport or at sea, and all Navy shore stations served the same meal on the same day throughout the fleet. As an example Thursday breakfast at every Navy galley was baked beans and corn bread. The one exception were submarines at sea.
Another fact, up until the 1930s, ships were built without a central dining facility for the crew. The crew ate their meals in their berthing compartments. Just before a meal was to be issued, 3 or 4 non rates (called mess cooks) from each mess, would report to the galley, they would pick up trays and pans of food and return to the berthing compartment. Here they would dish out the food to the men of the division that lived in that compartment. After chow, the mess cooks, stowed the mess tables in the compartment and returned the pans and trays to the galley.

[JHL]

I served in the Navy during the Cold War. I remember one Christmas underway on deployment in the Western Pacific. Late on Christmas Eve, a group of caroling sailors visiting my destroyer's Central Control Station (CCS) where I was the Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW). We sang carols and shared goodies from care packages. It's a sweet memory of Navy days before the internet, email, or women at sea. I take nothing away from the women who serve in the military, but those earlier days provided a kind of simplicity and male bonding that was something special.

I also remember the mess specialists bringing us fresh baked pastries or donuts from the galley during many mid-watches.

[ViLaLuz]

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