WWII Field Kitchen Overview

The GI Field Kitchen during WWII was part of the Company HQ, designed to serve 150-180 men. They intended to serve 2 hot meals per day: Breakfast & Supper, with Dinner (Lunch) as a combat ration. They were equipped with stoves, water heaters and mermite cans to deliver the hot food to the troops.

While sound in theory, often times in reality the kitchens had to make do with less equipment and were forced to adapt to the situations in which they were forced to operate. Despite this, mess staff did their best to keep the fighting man’s body and morale fed.

Filmed at Rockford WWII Days 2018

Special thanks to Nick Yi Photography: https://www.nickyi.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TriStateLivingHistoryAssociation/

Website: https://www.tslha.org/

Donation info. https://support.google.com/youtube/?p=donate_FAQ

Print Sources:

TM 10-405 (Apr 24, 1942) – The Army Cook

TM 10-406 (Nov 22, 1943) – Cooking Dehydrated Foods

TM 10-400 (Nov, 1944) – Stoves, Ranges, Ovens, and Cooking Outfits

TM 10-701 (Dec, 1945) – Range, Field M-1937

T/O 7-17 (Sept 1, 1942): http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/

Footage Sources:

The Battle of San Pietro – John Huston (1945)

TF 10-1237 – Rations in the Combat Zone Part 1 – Fighting Food

TF 10-1215 – Rations in the Combat Zone Part 2 – Unit Messing

TF 10-2454 – Unit Messing in the Field

TF 10-1202 – Baking in the Field Part 1 – The M1942 Field Baking Unit

MISC 1282 – Quartermaster Activities in the European Theater

Picture Sources:

185th Field Artillery, 34th ID from the H. Smith collection: http://34thinfantry.com/photos.html#

This is a world war two filled kitchen it is a company sized mess in other words it is designed to serve 150 to 180 men the field kitchen was actually part of the company organization part of the company headquarters although in reality it was more often put together with the

Next headquarters level the battalion level in other words you would have three of these kitchens operating together the reason being is that most company headquarters were simply too close to the front for the safe operation of the kitchen it also made it easier for supply it was easier to get

The trucks with the food the water and so forth to the kitchen so that they could prepare it and it really didn’t impact their efficiency at all because they could still take it forward when they needed to the heart of the operation would be the EM 1937 range

Stove with an M in 1937 range stove which is powered by gasoline you could cook anything that did not require refrigeration you can do roasts you can bake you can do pies pancakes bacon anything that you can do in a modern kitchen you can do on one of these range

Stoves now the food that was prepared tended to be fairly straightforward remember you are preparing for a large number of people the other limiting factor was the food that was available virtually all of the food that was served in these field kitchens had to be shipped from the United States which

Meant for the most part it was either dehydrated or canned the cooks were intended to serve two meals a day supper after dark breakfast before daylight if you’re in daylight you’re visible you become a prime target for artillery hrus dinner or it as the army called it we’d

Call it lunch was actually supposed to be one of the combat rations either a K or a C and this plan of serving two hot meals a day and one cold meal a day actually worked out more often than most people unfortunately it never worked out as

Well as Laura’s often as most people would prefer and in fact there are and were times when troops spent days sometimes weeks at a time eating nothing but combat rations and unfortunately those are also the stories you hear most about now the field kitchens serve a number of purposes one it’s not just

Nutrition keeping soldiers healthy keeping them fit for combat it was also a very important morale thing if you’ve ever spent any time living outside you realize just how important and how good a hot meal makes you feel when you get one now once the food is prepared you

Have to get it through the troops in the front how you keep it hot your use of myrrh might cans the myrrh might can is essentially a five gallon thermos you can either put the food directly into the myrrh might can or each one will take three inserts you can put the food

In load them up and it will keep the food hot for several hours you would then load it into a truck take it forward as close to the line as you could get unload set up and then you would pull the troops a few at a time off of the

Line if it was very quiet the cooks could actually go from position to position to do feed troops although that did not happen very often while every soldier was issued a mess kit in combat most of them did not carry a mess kit for a variety of reasons one is just one

More thing you have to carry too they do rattle they do make noise and can give away your position third and perhaps most important is that there’s no adequate cleaning facilities on the frontline so it becomes a health and safety issue in practice the cooks would bring the mess kits forward with the

Food serve the troops recollect the mess kits take them back and clean them up as part of their kitchen cleanup you’re going to need to hot water and lots of it the way you do that is with the immersion heaters the immersion heater is essentially a 30 gallon garbage can

With a gasoline-powered here with that heater you can basically boil water in one of those trash cans in about 25 30 minutes now obviously there’s two things the kitchen needs besides food you’re going to need gasoline you are going to need water now most kitchens had a water trailer that

They could haul or if they did not have that they had a cargo trailer that when you would load the gasoline water in five-gallon cans and that would also be typically where you carried your food now this is sort of an ideal setup for a field kitchen not every field kitchen

Looked like this number one while you were issued three range stoves three immersion heaters as many more mites as you needed in reality some kitchens operated with fewer grace toast some operated with more some had more immersion heaters some had less they wouldn’t necessarily set up under the

Fly they set up in a building a barn any place they could find shelter in many cases it was possible to take the three range stove line them up in the back of a two and a half ton truck permanently attached them and have a mobile kitchen

So the field kitchen tended to vary with the circumstances and the situation and the needs of the cooks in the unit at the time