Rat Pack Rememberances...
I was in the army in 1980/81 so the rat pack contents may have differed slightly to what others experienced. They came packed in a cardboard box covered with plastic and had a coloured sticker on the side to indicate the contents. The theory was that you got a different colour for each day. If my memory serves me correct, the black sticker was the most prized. Inside you found the usual 3 tins of unidentified stuff (even with them opened you sometimes had to guess what were the contents), the all time favourite was "steak and onions" with "spaghetti and meatballs" (only 1 meatball later on) a close 2nd, while the worst was "corned beef hash". The third tin was a vegetable, usually diced carrots or peas, occasionally mixed veg. Most of the time we never had tin openers and had to use our "Dankie Tannie" or pikstel knives to get them open. Later rat packs had things like pickled fish, curry and "Owambo Piele" as part of the selection. There were 2 distinct types of doggies too.. the nice thick chewy one and thinnish ones which were more like demented cream crackers. Personally I loved dog biscuits, they were always in demand too... we used them as rusks, bread, chewables, snacks and bartering tools. They were the mainstay of our snack time. Later versions of the rat pack had Super-C sweets in them and most seemed to have glucosse sweets too.
Then there were the milkshakes.. yummy. We used to put them in the plastic smoke grenade holders and shake them, just like the Wimpy bar.. only with dust. The peas (why did the army only have tinned peas and carrots??) and one of the tinned meats we would dump into a dixie and add water, powdered soup, the crumbed remains of thin doggies and any other unwanted tins and boil it on the esbit provided. The first empty tin you acquired you punched holes in it and made into an esbit stove which was a permanent fixture in your webbing. Usually 2 guys would pool what they had and share it out once it was cooked.. there wasn't enough for a "stew" but enough for a thickish lumpy soup.
The cheesie's were considered legal tender, you could swop one for 4 smokes. The exchange rate depending on how far one was from payday.
Those energy bars were briliant, on the border they were deliciously chewy and very popular, especially "rum and raisin" flavour. In Lohathla, during winter they were more like bricks... and had to be sucked.
The other popular item in the rat packs were the energy drinks.. naartjie, orange.. they were wonderful, shaken in that plastic bag they were tasty and refreshing and amongst the first things to go, we very rarely swopped them out.
Some of the early ratpacks had a small carton with porridge in.. you just added water. Later on the porridge was in a bag and you still added water but had to make it in a fire bucket. They never seemed to give you enough sugar in the rat packs, and the condensed milk tube.. that always went for tea or coffee anyways or was sucked till it was dry before even getting near the tea or coffee. The worst thing about rat packs was that you needed so much water to get the maximum out of them, and when they started doing them on the cheap we ended up being screwed; the book matches broke, the esbits often would not light. The cheesie's were taken out and we lost an important bartering tool. The doggies got thin and tasted like nothing and the occurence of corned beef hash became more frequent.
And then there were those endless tins of peas...
