Tonight's dinner...and a story

[Wizard]

Crab is at it's lowest price in Saint Louis in several years. At $8/lb. for Snow crab, I can afford to splurge a little. While not as good as King crab, my palate was happy. As I prepared the meal I was thinking of the best and worst meals of my life. Both occurred in Vietnam and only a couple of weeks apart. My outfit was a Combat Engineer company that swept mines and cleared vegetation for new landing zones. We were in the field for 2 weeks then a few days at Chu Lai. Our compound was on top of a cliff overlooking the South China Sea. During a free day, several of us went down the cliff to skinny dip in the ocean. As we dried off, a papa-san landed his small fishing boat near us. He approached carrying a bag. Everyone picked up a weapon, you know, just in case. He reached into the bag and pulled out a giant Blue crab. I mean giant...as big as a holiday Turkey platter. We tried to dicker a price but had a language barrier. The old guy pulls out an American dollar bill and points to the crab. We decided to buy the crab and split it four ways. As we handed the dollar to the man, he handed us the bag. Yeah, he walked away leaving us holding the bag. The bag held ten of the crabs. We dug a pit on the beach, burnt some wood in the pit, put some moist seaweed over the wood fire, threw in the live crabs, more seaweed and covered it in sand. When the crabs had cooked, we cracked them open and it was the best meal of my life.
The worst meal was at an Air Force mess hall. After two weeks in the field eating C rations, the C.O. set up a breakfast for us at the air base in Danang. The sum beech mess sergeant served us scrambled eggs and S.O.S. Sounds good except he made the eggs with powdered eggs and powered milk. Dang stuff wouldn't even congeal in the skillet. Our Captain went through the line first and the company filed down the line. When everyone had their meal, the Captain stood, walked to the waste can and dumped his meal in the can. The rest of the company followed him. The C.O. pulled C rations off the cook truck and we ate those, leaving our trash in front of the mess hall door.
You folks have some stories, don't hold back.

Wizard

[Captsteve]

 I was in the Navy for the 200th birthday of the Navy. They announced that we would have candlelight dinner and they would be serving steak and lobster.  We thought, yea, right this out to be good. Lol. Actually, it was great, much to our surprise. Man, that was such a long time ago it's wonder I remember it.

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[D.W. Verts]

As always, thanks to all of you for your service.

Dale

[bassmedic46]

Thank you all for your service.

[Oldfart9999]

When I was a kid living in Watertown, a buddy and I rode our bikes to the small Air base on the top of the hill in the city park. It was part of the early warning RADAR stations for the old Dew Line. The gate was open, they regularly received visitors. They invited us in and gave us a tour, nothing top secret, and then fed us lunch, it was a great meal given by some great guys, my buddy joined the Air Force when he was old enough.
Rodney