Foraging for Food

My Father's War in Real Time

A great appreciation for a good meal united all the men. After living on K rations for days and weeks at a time during the intense combat and the on-going firefights, enough men had developed gastro-intestinal problems that General Burress, commander of the 100th Division, was alarmed. Some had been in the foxholes so long that the remains of tiny K ration cans glinted all around. Burroughs ordered the cooks of the 100^th Division to make sure they got at least one hot meal to the men, but that didn’t say how good that hot meal had to be. The history of the 399th complained about climbing out of the safety of their foxholes for beans and cubed carrots.

Cooks tried to get hot meals up close to the line when they could—mostly before dawn and after dark. They’d prepare a big mess of stew or meat and potatoes with hot brewed coffee, put it in insulated containers called marmite cans, drive it in a jeep and trailer to a few hundred yards behind the foxholes. They’d bring up the mess kits with them, otherwise, everything went in one big pile into the canteen cup. A few men at a time would go back to the chow line, fill their mess kits, and return to the safety of their holes. If the Germans spotted the activity, they’d start to lob artillery in and the cooks would take off to the rear.

TC Moore and a friend with their mess kits, labeled February 1945

The men tried themselves to find ways to get a bit more variety in their meals, but when they were on the move it could backfire:

When walking through the small peasant villages…they all got a kick out of flirting with the short-skirted women, and of making deals for a few chickens. At one town one of the guys made such a deal thinking that we might remain there for the night and he might have a nice juicy dinner of fried chicken, but he was terribly fooled. We stayed there only a few minutes and we moved out. He had to carry his M1 rifle plus a nice live frying-size chicken. After a few hazardous miles coupled with some 88 shells landing nearby, the chicken earned its freedom in the mad scramble to hit Mother Earth.

Livestock were stashed away or had found themselves save places. Dad had one such encounter with livestock. He wrote home to Mom about one of his acts of bravery:

You could have laughed a while back, the infantry was hearing voices down in the tunnels of a captured pill box. Bagley and I undertook the mission with explosives and routed out pigs, chickens, and a goose, a very dangerous mission against a determined enemy. We chase the goose for some time before it gave in.

At the end of January, Dad is writing home about having fried potatoes and sausages, which one of the guys was cooking up and had invited him to share. Because they were relatively stationary, opportunities presented themselves. One of the 399^th combat team reported home on February 6 that he was waiting for his dinner to cook—a chicken had wandered into encampment from across the road and was now in a pot.² It wasn’t too much later and he was reporting home that they had stripped the countryside of chickens. It was a bit of a joke that they had shot “an enemy lamb”.³ There were quite a few reports of collecting animals killed by mines. Officially, they weren’t allowed to consume local food. Dad liked to tell me about the time when he dodged the bullet of official reprimand. He and his sergeant had "liberated" a huge wheel of cheese from a cheese factory. With the constant gastrointestinal issues, cheese was much prized in hopes it would stem the tide. They'd put it on the hood of the jeep and were just cutting into it with a bayonet when a colonel rode up in a command car and waved 1st Lt. Morse over.

The sergeant whispered, "what do we do?" Dad walked to the colonel's car, figuring he was in for it.

"Lieutenant," the colonel said, "Is that your cheese?"

"Yes, sir."

Dad braced for the consequences.

"Can I have a slice?" Apparently the gastrointestinal issues didn't respect rank.

It might have been forbidden, but it's clear that barter was universal among the mess sergeants and supply sergeants. Mike Escalera recalled that as soon as they were in a town, he’d hustle up great French bread for his guys. He would get flour from American supplies and go to a bakery. In exchange for an extra sack of flour as pay, he’d get bread for the men in his unit—until he hit a baker who wouldn’t cut a deal. Mike learned later from another villager that the baker was a Nazi sympathizer.

The order not to touch local food also included wildlife. No wildlife could be killed on the 7^th Army front.⁴ The men from the city might have been ok with that ruling, but men like Dad who had spent years camping in the snow in the Adirondacks with his Uncle Hugh, hunting deer and fishing trout, didn’t seem to pay much attention to the order. He wrote Mom on January 22 that “Think I will do a little rabbit huntin tomorrow—can’t seem to have much luck with the deer.” J.P. told me about bagging a rabbit and cooking it in his helmet by pouring a little gasoline on it and igniting it. He admitted that it tasted just a bit funny, but it was still better than another round of K rations. TC told me he broke up the food monotony by confiscating sardines off any German they captured.

General Patch’s ruling may have been meant to cut down on accidents. Carl Blanton told me that he had been leading a patrol through the forest. He was a bit ahead of them, when a buck startled out of the brush and raced across ahead of him. He shot it. Next thing he knew, he had to dive for the dirt as his patrol let fire, thinking there was a German in the woods.

A bit later in February, when the snow was melting and the rivers were running high, JP and TC decided that it was time for a fish fry. JP told me that everywhere they had gone, they had carried along government-issued sports equipment, including a volleyball net. So they strung the volleyball net across the stream, down in the water. Then they took a block of TNT starch and a percussion cap and let it off upstream. They hauled in a net full of stunned fish. JP, even sixty years later, was very pleased with himself. To my surprise in looking through photos that TC gave me, there they were--JP and TC and the fish.

JP Wallis on the left and TC Moore on the right

Hunting seems to have been a widespread idea in spite of General Patch. The Story of the Century joked that at the end of February, “a flock of geese flew over and the entire front opened up.”