Ok.....FINALLY something I can relate to. While I was in the Actvie Army, I was a Senior First Cook (E-6/SSG) with a Cavalry Squadron in the Kunar Province. during my last combat tour, I served in Afghanistan, and was tasked with the additional duty of being the food service COTR (Contracting Officer Theatre Representative), and it was my main job to liase between the Military (the Army in this case) and the contractors who provided us our meals. Our food service personnel were deployed to forward Combat Outposts, and the main FOB needed these contractors.
Knowing how the government operates with these contractors, and having intimate knowledge of exactly how much money we spend monthly on rations, I suspect there are a couple of financial reasons why they would cut this mid-night meal:
1) low head count. It makes no sense logistically and financially to have meals cooked up for say..1500 meals daily, and only 23 Marines on this camp come in during the midnight meal to eat. The Army has strict guidelines on what can be kept as left overs and served again, and the time frame in which it needs to do so, so cooking up unneeded food is just wasteful. Remember folks, these are YOUR tax dollars that's being spent to feed these 23 marines.
2) we are in the process of consolidating forces for the 2014 drawdown of Afghanistan, which means instead of bringing in more supplies to more bases, they are closing the smaller ones, and relocating the supplies to these larger bases. This also means contractors are drawing down as well, so these people hired to do the base upkeep and such, are being sent back to their home nations. This also means that it would cost us more to ship back MRE's to the US, and they want to use up the stockpile already in country. This, I suspect, is the main reason for the loss of the midnight meal. I'm sure that they may not be serving "hot meals" like they do at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but they are getting supplements like soft drinks, milk, juices, and per-packaged desserts and such with these MRE's....trust me, these Marines are NOT going without.
3) political. This is the one that everyone suspects to be true, but actually may not fair into the truth as much as people would like to believe. Do I think that a political undertone based off the sequester is evident here....yes. It's like when election time comes around, and the candidates start spouting how their opponents are going to cut high profile entitlements, like Medicare, or social security, or tell the country something that we have already seen, and that's to take away our guns. Will they do it? Probably not in this election cycle, but that doesn't mean it didn't get the desired effects.
None of us, especially our vets, want to see our forces "do with out", but sometimes we need to look deeper into the story than the inflammatory headlines.
Ok, I'm off my soap box.....let the bombardment commence.
Knowing how the government operates with these contractors, and having intimate knowledge of exactly how much money we spend monthly on rations, I suspect there are a couple of financial reasons why they would cut this mid-night meal:
1) low head count. It makes no sense logistically and financially to have meals cooked up for say..1500 meals daily, and only 23 Marines on this camp come in during the midnight meal to eat. The Army has strict guidelines on what can be kept as left overs and served again, and the time frame in which it needs to do so, so cooking up unneeded food is just wasteful. Remember folks, these are YOUR tax dollars that's being spent to feed these 23 marines.
2) we are in the process of consolidating forces for the 2014 drawdown of Afghanistan, which means instead of bringing in more supplies to more bases, they are closing the smaller ones, and relocating the supplies to these larger bases. This also means contractors are drawing down as well, so these people hired to do the base upkeep and such, are being sent back to their home nations. This also means that it would cost us more to ship back MRE's to the US, and they want to use up the stockpile already in country. This, I suspect, is the main reason for the loss of the midnight meal. I'm sure that they may not be serving "hot meals" like they do at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but they are getting supplements like soft drinks, milk, juices, and per-packaged desserts and such with these MRE's....trust me, these Marines are NOT going without.
3) political. This is the one that everyone suspects to be true, but actually may not fair into the truth as much as people would like to believe. Do I think that a political undertone based off the sequester is evident here....yes. It's like when election time comes around, and the candidates start spouting how their opponents are going to cut high profile entitlements, like Medicare, or social security, or tell the country something that we have already seen, and that's to take away our guns. Will they do it? Probably not in this election cycle, but that doesn't mean it didn't get the desired effects.
None of us, especially our vets, want to see our forces "do with out", but sometimes we need to look deeper into the story than the inflammatory headlines.
Ok, I'm off my soap box.....let the bombardment commence.
