We didn’t have MRE’s, we had C-Rations. Some were okay and some weren’t.
An NCO or Officer should always have his subordinates welfare in mind 24/7.
That’s the job. You don’t matter. They do. They’re the ones that do the heavy lifting.
Frankly, that’s the ethic I kept in my civilian career and it has served me well. As a department head, I see it as my first responsibility to be the arrow-catcher for my people.
A buddy of mine served on a PBR on the Mekong in 1968. (Take that, John Kerry.) He said they lived on C's while cruising.
He said one batch they got was left over from WW2. It wasn't any worse than their current stuff, except for the cigarettes (C's had cigarettes until the early 1970s). He said the cigarettes sparkled like a fuse.
Better clothes and better chow are a small investment to keep down the little gripes of the troops that can add up, over time, to a major beef. I had no real complaints in Basic, but I didn't have much to smile about, either. One afternoon, lunch on the rifle range had strawberry shortcake for desert. It was an unexpected surprise for me, and the only thing that would have made me happier that day would have been an honorable discharge, but that was still six years away.
Some of the C-Rats weren’t too bad. I had a special likin’ for the brown meat-like substance with the coagulated gravy-like substance on the top. If you were to stick just a touch of a C4 lump on the bottom of the tin, and apply an activated Zippo flame to the plastique, it would warm that concocotion into a grand meal. Some goooooood eatin’. /bs