Photo By Master Sgt. David Largent | Bob Diekman is standing in from of the grill cooking a batch of steaks to be served...... read more read more
Members of Serving Our Troops, an organization from St. Paul, Minn., cooked and served a steak dinner to hundreds of Soldiers Dec. 12, 2009 who are deployed to Camp Buehring, Kuwait with the 1-151 Field Artillery, a Minnesota Army National Guard unit.
The same meal was prepared and served to the friends and Families of the Soldiers at a program held at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown St. Paul, Minn.
Another group of volunteers from the Serving Our Troops organization went to Basra, Iraq to cook for the Minnesota Soldiers stationed there.
Video camera's were set up at all three locations for a a live feed broadcast, allowing them to see each other as they enjoyed the meal together from thousands of miles away.
"Back in Minnesota the Families are eating steaks just like the Soldiers here and they get to be on video so it's a really good event and great for morale," said Pvt. Christopher Rees, a gunner on a Convoy Escort Team. "Overall it was a good event with the best steak I've had since I've been here," he said.
Serving Our Troops started as a group of volunteers who work at several of the restaurants in St. Paul that helped raise the money for the steaks by collecting donations from people that feel the need to do something for the service members deployed. The group has since expanded and has members from throughout the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
"This is a real community effort. All of these folks in Serving Our Troops have businesses and restaurants in St. Paul, and all of them helped make what we call a St. Paul meal," said Ted Davis, the convention and visitors authority representative and liaison.
"They love the opportunity to bring a little bit of home to the people overseas and to bring Families together. Everyday people back home have dinner with their Families and Serving Our Troops is just an extension of that," said Davis. "Its like having Sunday dinner with the Family; only its halfway around the world."
Serving Our Troops has been bringing high quality steaks to Minnesota Guardsmen since the beginning of 2004.
"A couple of the guys who are now in charge of the program were sitting in a bar enjoying a meal one day when all of a sudden something crossed their minds," said Davis. "If they could enjoy this meal here and those men and women overseas can't, what can be done about that? That's when they came up with the Serving Our Troops organization," he added.
They've done a number of send off ceremonies in the states and have delivered steaks to Iraq in the past and to Kosovo.
"The event went very well. The whole time I've been here, I've been treated like a king," said Pat Flynn, an employee from Rapid Packaging and one of the volunteer chefs at the event. "Everything went off without a hitch and we had some nice, warm cooking going on. It was an eye-opening experience to be able to cook for the troops and hear their experiences."
The chefs cooked 750 of the 1100 steaks they brought to Kuwait. The rest of the steaks that were not grilled were stored to be prepared later for the Soldiers that were out on mission or that couldn't make it to the event that night.
| Date Taken: | 12.12.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 02.05.2010 03:56 |
| Story ID: | 44957 |
| Location: |
| Web Views: | 331 |
| Downloads: | 228 |
This work, Steaks for Troops, by SPC Matthew H. Oda, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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