Photo By Staff Sgt. Jaime Avila | Staff Sgt. Charles DeMary, a 54-year-old native of Norfolk, Va., and 1st cook with the...... read more read more
FORT HUNTER LIGGETT, Calif. — While the rest of Base Camp Tusi is sleeping, the soldiers that make up the Dinning Facility staff are cooking and getting the breakfast meal ready for the hungry soldiers participating in Combat Support Training Exercise 91 12-01.
“We usually start our shift at four o’clock in the morning. We will serve breakfast from 6 to 7 a.m., then clean up around the DFAC and make our preparations for the next meal,” said Staff Sgt. Charles DeMary, a 57-year-old native of Norfolk, Va., and 1st cook with the 196th Transportation Company out of Orlando, Fla.
Cooks feed soldiers all around the world day in and day out, but it’s not as easy as going to a kitchen and just cooking the food. These soldiers have to start from the ground up. It begins with planning the mission and organizing where the equipment will be set up.
“It takes a lot to set this up because every base camp is different and everything has to be set up according to a certain standard… They have to have a trash-point setup, a sanitization center, freezers, the actual tent where soldiers are to eat, and a fueling point,” said Staff Sgt. Abdoukhadre Butler, a 41-year-old native of Detroit, and mess sergeant with the 115th Maintenance Company out of Atlanta.
Once they have everything set up, the cooks go to work in their distinctive piece of equipment, the Mobile Kitchen Trailer, that can go anywhere in the world and provide a variety of meals to soldiers. The MKT was first fielded by the Army in the 1970’s and can provide meals for approximately 250-300 soldiers per meal.
“The tent we have out there is called the MKT trailer and it’s basically a kitchen on wheels. We have M2 burners, ovens and grills in the MKT. It’s a fully equipped kitchen where we can bake and grill steaks if we wanted to,” said DeMary.
For the soldiers cooking in the field, the MKT is the cook’s signature piece of equipment added Butler.
“In the field, our main piece of equipment is the MKT because that’s where everything starts-- that’s really all you need,” he said.
Despite the fact that these soldiers are working in a field-training environment with no access to a permanent DFAC, they still manage to provide a variety of meals to their fellow soldiers during their stay at Base Camp Tusi.
“In the field, we have a twenty-one day menu with a component called the Unitized Group Rations, which are pre-prepared meals that are basically heat-and-serve,” said Butler.
Butler understands soldiers do not always think the food they receive from the MKT’s is the best, but he doesn’t let that get him down.
“A lot of the food here is pretty bland sometimes, so I always try to add a little to it to make it taste better because I realize this is all they have,” said Butler.
Providing good-tasting meals is not the only thing these cooks do. They also strive to provide the best customer service they can to their fellow soldiers. But they can’t do it alone. This is why they enlist the help of the kitchen personnel staff, which is a group of volunteers made up of soldiers from different units to help and assist the cooks with their daily missions.
“We need a minimum of five cooks and about six to eight KPs which come from surrounding units to run this DFAC,” said DeMary.
In addition to KPs, there are also more positions that need to be filled to operate a DFAC smoothly.
“You always have to be flexible. In a real world situation, you always have a mess sergeant or DFAC manager… who basically handles all the paperwork and the set-up of everything. When you have shifts you have a first cook, and what they do is assign everybody their jobs for the day,” said Butler.
Those assignments can range from the ones who cook the meats and the vegetables and the ones who wash and sanitize the dishes, to the ones who serve and handle the outside line, which contains the drinks and salads, he added.
It’s important that everyone in the DFAC staff do their part in order to maintain the standard that has been set by the Army.
“We also get inspected by safety officers and they come around every base camp, but they inspect the cooks the hardest and if something doesn’t meet the standard, they’ll shut us down. The medics come out and inspect us too. They check the temperature of the freezer and make sure the trash is far enough away,” said Butler.
The medics also make sure there are no other sanitary issues in or around the DFAC’s working area, he added.
Cooking for an entire base camp is not easy, but with the right people on the team it makes life that much easier.
“I’ve worked with a lot of different people and the guys I’m working with now are pretty good. I don’t have to tell them anything. They just start doing what they have to do. These guys are good,” said Butler.
These cooks do their best to make sure soldiers have a warm meal and they understand it’s an important part of the Army.
“A cook’s job is very important because a soldier has to eat to keep going, whether it’s in garrison or out in the field. If we didn’t cook for them, a soldier would have to eat nothing but MREs everyday. So to be able to give a soldier a hot meal before they go out on a mission is very important,” said DeMary.
| Date Taken: | 07.20.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 07.23.2012 12:04 |
| Story ID: | 92007 |
| Location: | FORT HUNTER LIGGETT, CA, US |
| Hometown: | ATLANTA, GA, US |
| Hometown: | DETROIT, MI, US |
| Hometown: | HUNTSVILLE, AL, US |
| Hometown: | MILWAUKEE, WI, US |
| Hometown: | MOBILE, AL, US |
| Hometown: | NEW BERN, NC, US |
| Hometown: | NORFOLK, VA, US |
| Hometown: | ORLANDO, FL, US |
| Hometown: | ROCKY MOUNT, NC, US |
| Web Views: | 117 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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