What people eat has always been of interest to me. My interest in food began when I was a child. My way of putting it is that I learned to eat at an early age and was never able to recover. One can tell quite a bit about cultures by studying, and sampling, what they eat.
I mention elsewhere a bit about what the team ate in Dak Pek. That was while we were in camp. When we went on combat patrols, we ate what the ‘Yards ate, which we called indig (for indigenous) rations. They were manufactured in Japan, or perhaps Taiwan or Okinawa, and were the Asian equivalent of MREs, or meal, ready to eat. We were told that some U. S. troops in Nam got MREs, but we didn’t, so my knowledge of them is purely hearsay. We referred to them as LRRPs, meaning long range reconnaissance patrol, because they were so much lighter and easier to carry that small patrols fielded by U. S. units carried them.
The indig rations consisted of a foil packet containing several items. The largest was a heavy plastic pouch of cooked, dried rice. When reconstituted, it would nearly fill a canteen cup. It could be reconstituted with cold water and eaten cold (we usually did that at the evening meal to keep from lighting fires), or with hot water. It was much better hot. There was also a small foil packet of dried fish or some kind of beef or pork concoction that weighed an ounce or so. There were a couple other things, condiments of one sort or another depending on the kind of meat. We and the ‘Yards would take two of these for each day we planned to be on patrol. Although that doesn’t sound like much food when we were climbing up and down mountains all day, it seemed to meet our, and their, needs.
While the team was preparing for a certain patrol, indig rations were issued at noon to the ‘Yards who were to leave just before dusk. Each had several days’ rations. When the patrol fell in for inspection, one ‘Yard was short some of his rations. We discovered that between noon and about 1600, he had consumed two day’s rations, far more than any of the larger Americans could possibly eat.
The ‘Yards loved the indig rations. It was several steps above their usual fare in camp. The Vietnamese officers and soldiers seemed always to wind up with the choicer pieces of whatever the troops got in camp. That was rice, of course, and small piece of beef or pork or whatever else was sent to us. Most of the food supplies came in by parachute dropped from Air Force C-123s or occasionally an Army Caribou. Since there was no feasible way to preserve fresh meat, the cattle, hogs, and chickens or ducks were dropped by parachute in wooden crates. Live, of course. The animals were butchered right in the camp, and the resulting meat distributed through the CIDG chain of command. I don’t remember that they wasted anything but the hair and horns, and maybe not the horns.
On patrol, the ‘Yards sometimes found other things to supplement their diet. One rare delicacy was honey. On one occasion, the patrol filed past a rotten tree stump in which a colony of stingless bees had constructed a hive. It was filled with honeycomb, honey, bees, and bee grubs in various stages of maturity. As each ‘Yard passed, he reached deep into the stump and brought out a big handful of a mixture of all of the above. He would munch contentedly on his prize as he walked away, eating everything with relish and eventually licking his hands clean. I did not partake of that particular treat.
On that same patrol, I saw another interesting epicurean delight. We were moving through the jungle on a trail that obviously not been used for months if not years. The trail was notched into the side of a very steep hill, and the point man was having to clear jungle growth in order for us to pass. The ‘Yard just in front of me in the column suddenly froze—which was a definite alarm signal. I immediately froze and put my M-16 on full auto, raised my hand to make sure those following were alerted, and with a couple of pints of adrenaline pumping, I slowly turned to look where he was looking. He was looking at the side of the hill on his right, which was only a couple of feet away, but I couldn’t see anything. Very slowly, he turned to his right and eased forward. Finally, he pounced. There was a squawk and a flutter that really startled me. Out of the brush on the hillside a bantam-sized wild chicken exploded into flight. He had seen it sitting on its nest and grabbed for the prize but missed. He looked into the nest and came out grinning widely with a half dozen small eggs. He carefully cradled them and we resumed the march and breathing. At noon break, he quickly built a small smokeless fire and got a canteen cup of water boiling. He dropped in the eggs and eagerly awaited the coming feast. When the eggs had cooled enough for him to handle them, he gently cracked and peeled one. Inside was a fully developed chicken. He seemed not in the least dismayed, but carefully began to nibble on the almost non-existent flesh. It took a while, but he finished them all with great relish.
Also on that same patrol, a day or two later we located a ‘Yard village in dense bamboo. The people had been kidnapped by the Viet Cong and were being forced to raise rice for the infiltrating North Vietnamese. I think they had been taken from Plei Bom, a village located a few klicks south of Dak Pek. They lived in bamboo huts built in such thick bamboo thickets that we were on the trail in the middle of the village before we realized it. We ran off the few Viet Cong who were guarding the villagers with a few rounds of rifle fire. Within three or four minutes, every person in that village was packed and ready to go. They carried what little they had in finely woven bamboo baskets suspended on their backs like a rucksack.. They stuck to us like velcro, and followed us until we got back to camp two or three days later.
I was amazed at how the villagers cooked the unpolished rice they had brought along. They would cut a joint of green bamboo about two or three feet long and four inches in diameter. In this they would put a measure of rice and some water from a nearby creek. They then propped the bamboo upright in a fire. The green bamboo wouldn’t burn with the water inside cooling it, but it would get hot enough to boil the water and cook the rice. When the rice was done, they would split the bamboo lengthwise, creating two long narrow trenchers for serving.
The first night they were with us I observed a mother perform a very touching ritual with a child less than a year old. She must have been trying to wean him and train him to “table” food. She would take a mouthful of rice, chew it to a thick paste, then spit some of it out into her hand and feed it to her child. For the first time in my life I realized how the cave men and women must have lived.
Another delicacy the ‘Yards really liked, aside from rat meat, was cicadas. As a kid I called them July flies. The ‘Yards would hold the big fat insects by the wings, singe them slightly over a fire, and gobble them down--sans wings. I never got up nerve to try that one, either. But I suspect if I had to live the life of the locals for long, I would give up some of my picky ways.
There was occasionally other food available, especially vegetables grown by the villagers. The team got very few of these, but the ‘Yard strikers occasionally got enough to supplement their diet. Besides, since they had been recruited locally, most of them had family somewhere in the villages, so getting additional food, when it was available, was not too difficult for them. One time we did get fresh vegetables was when the local corn crop came in. We sent the KPs down to the village to buy some ears of fresh corn. It was so good that I made a pig, better make that hog, of myself. I regretted my impetuous behavior for a day or two afterward.
Copyright 1999
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