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By and large, the British Soldier is the
best fed in the
world, if you go by the ration packs. You'll see from the photo and menu sheet
below, that the choice of menus are quite good (containing a breakfast, and
main mean plus dessert); in addition, the drinks and sundries packs are well-
stocked.
Remember: "Hurry Up And Wait" and "If In Doubt, Brew Up!" are almost bye-laws
of
the modern military, so there should be a few hot and cold drink mixes in
there!
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So what's in the box?
Here's a typical temperate climate GP ration pack, with all
the contents laid
out. You'll note that there's quite a lot in that 20cm x 18cm x 10.5cm box!
Note the three silver pouches on top of the box. These are
your Breakfast,
Main Meal, and Dessert packs. Most are very tasty and the Treacle Pudding has
replaced the Soldiers favourite - Mixed Fruit Pudding. |
So, what do you get in
addition to the pouched foods?
All in all, it averages out at 30-odd separate packs of one sort or another:
- An Oatmeal block (really a sweet oatmeal biscuit - quite tasty!)
- Chocolate bars or a bar of Kendal Mint Cake, according to the menu
- Biscuits, brown (malted and hard, pack of six)
- Biscuits, fruit-filled (malted hard garibaldi-like, pack of six)
- Cheese, processed, or meat paté, according to the menu
- Tea, Instant, White, 4 x sachets
- Coffee, instant, 2 x 5 grams sachets
- Sugar, quick dissolving, 8 x 10 grams sachets
- Drinking chocolate mix, 1 sachet
- Vegetable stock drink mix, 1 x sachet
- Instant soup (varying flavours), 2 x sachets
- Beverage whitener (non-dairy creamer), 2 x sachets
- Gum, chewing, PK, 5 sticks
- Sweets, boiled, 1 pack assorted flavours
- Fruit drink mix, either orange or lemon (enough for 1 litre of drink)
- Tissues, paper (Kleenex individual pack)
- Waterproof matches (10) and striker (1)
- Water purification tablets (6)
This is far in excess of the sundries that other nations
military forces are
supplied, and just goes to show that a British Soldier truly marches on his
stomach !
By the way, in case you were wondering where the
Hexamine fuel tablet packs (for the issued folding
HEXI stoves) are, they don't come with the ration packs;
they're
separately
supplied. Intended to last two days, they are re-supplied to troops in the
field at the same time as rations are supplied, which is, on
average, every two days (at least, that's how my old unit scheduled re-supply
runs).
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