Subscribe
As evening approaches, roughly 450 Soldiers return from conducting field training, their hunger coming home with them. A hot meal is the first thing on their mind, and the team to make this happen are the seven cooks who know their way around a (mobile) kitchen.
Cooks with the 417th Quarter Master Company are tasked with preparing hot breakfast and dinner out of a Mobile Kitchen Trailer (MKT) each day during the Bridge-Combat Sustainment Training Exercise (CSTX) conducted from 8 to 29 March 2018.
The demand to feed Soldiers requires that cooks are up before dawn, working longer days to ensure the Army isn’t marching on empty stomachs.
“Our mission is feeding Soldiers. That’s what we do. …Wake up around 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. to cook breakfast and be done …. If we get everybody fed at a decent time we will be done by 10 or 11 o’clock. After that, it’s getting ready for the next meal,” said Spc. Gabriel Dominguez, 92G, Food Service Specialist, with 417th.
On the menu this particular evening are eggrolls, which need to be started in the early afternoon to be ready by dinnertime. “We got that M59 range (Army Field Range Stove/Oven Door), so that has little racks that you can put on it. That’s a slow process, but we’ll get it done. We will probably get out of her tonight at 10 or 11:30 because we had a late shipment come in. It’s a pretty long day. We’ll be here again at 2 or 3 a.m.”
While preparing meals for such large a number of Soldiers can be daunting task, the 417th cooks are able to adapt in tight situations and step up where it counts. “For the most part it’s not really hard - it’s the prep and execution. Because we have such small kitchen-units, we have to get about 200 servings out there and while they’re serving we are still cooking the food the whole time.”
The cooks’ job sustains combat readiness and lethality. “For the Soldiers… if they’re hungry they are not ready to fight. We went out there and had to do the lanes with them and we came back and contemplated if we really wanted to make dinner. We sat down for five minutes and said let’s get up! The last thing we need is having a revolt on our hands because everyone is hungry. An MRE is good if you need it, but it doesn’t make the cut. A hot meal beats it every time, especially in these field environments,” said Spc. Dominguez.
“For me, it’s really just seeing the Soldiers happy and making sure that they are well fed. Morale could drop out of nowhere with snow, mud, rain… everything will kill morale and least we can do is get a hot meal for everybody,” said Dominguez.
| Date Taken: | 03.23.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 04.19.2018 08:51 |
| Story ID: | 273652 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX , KY, US |
| Web Views: | 35 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, How 7 Cooks served more than 450 Soldiers daily during Bridge-CSTX, by MAJ Khoran Lee, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
LEAVE A COMMENT