Long ago, early eighties, while hunting I sat down in a fire break created by USFS during a forest fire the year before. The heel of my hunting boot struck a hard object in the dirt and when I pulled the object from the ground I realized it was a C-rat can of peanut butter. The production date was 1952. The can wasn’t corroded at all. I brushed the dirt off and opened it with my ever available John Wayne. I ate every bit of it and reminisced while doing so. Ham and lima beans were my favorite as well.
“Ham and lima beans were my favorite as well.”
My Dad’s cousin was in WWII and wrote in his memoirs about the rations. He said he got to Europe awhile after D-day. Guys were giving up their ham and pork rations - he loved it!
Then he got closer to the action and they drove and walked over the dead Germans. With the pigs feeding on their corpses. He stopped eating those rations too!
When I was on a USFS fire suppression crew in the mid 60s, we carried 2 days worth of C rats in our fire packs. These were all dated from the early 50s.