Who Were the American Soldiers of World War Two?
The United States Army of World War Two was one of the most rapidly expanded military forces in modern history. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American army numbered around 1.5 million men. By the end of the war it had grown to over 8 million, with a further 3 million serving in the navy and marine corps. In total, around 16 million Americans served in uniform across the course of the conflict.
They came from everywhere. Farm boys from Kansas, factory workers from Detroit, fishermen from Louisiana, students from New York City. Many had never left their home state before the war put them on a ship to England, North Africa, or the Pacific. They fought across an enormous range of environments, from the frozen forests of Belgium to the volcanic islands of the Pacific, from the deserts of Tunisia to the hedgerows of Normandy.
In many ways the American soldier was the best fed combatant of the entire war. The United States entered the conflict as the most powerful industrial economy on earth, with an agricultural system that was not only intact but operating at full capacity. That abundance shaped everything about how American soldiers ate, and it shaped how soldiers from every other nation viewed them too.
What Did American Soldiers Actually Eat? A Day in the Life
From morning rations to field kitchens, a look at the daily diet of the American soldier from breakfast to dinner.
Ask a veteran of the Second World War from almost any country what they thought of American soldiers and food will come up quickly. British soldiers envied their rations. Soviet soldiers traded for their canned goods. German soldiers, by the end of the war, were sometimes surrendering partly because they knew American prisoner of war camps meant regular meals. Food was one of the clearest expressions of the gap between American industrial capacity and the rest of the world at war.
That said, the experience of eating in the American military varied enormously depending on where you were. A soldier in a rear-area base in England ate very differently from a man pinned down in a foxhole in the Hurtgen Forest. The United States Army developed several different ration systems precisely because no single solution worked for every situation.
Let’s walk through a typical day.
Morning: Breakfast
For soldiers in garrison or rear-area conditions, breakfast was served in a mess hall and it was, by the standards of any other army in the war, remarkable. The American military mess hall breakfast could include powdered eggs scrambled and cooked in bulk, bacon or salt pork, toast made from white bread, oatmeal or cornmeal porridge, canned fruit, and coffee. Real coffee, not a grain substitute. This was one of the details that impressed soldiers from other nations most consistently. The Americans had actual coffee every single morning, in quantity, and they drank it the way other armies drank it only on special occasions.
Powdered eggs were a point of contention among American soldiers themselves. Officially they provided the same nutrition as fresh eggs. In practice they had a texture and flavour that soldiers found deeply uninspiring and complaints about them appear in letters home, unit diaries, and memoirs with remarkable consistency. The army was aware of this and fresh eggs were issued when supply allowed, which in forward areas was not often.
On the front line, breakfast looked quite different. The soldier’s personal ration in a combat situation was built around the C ration or the K ration, two of the main field feeding systems the American army developed during the war.
The C ration came in small flat tins and included a meat component and a bread and accessory component. Breakfast versions of the C ration included meat and beans, meat and potato hash, or meat and vegetable stew. These were eaten cold from the tin or heated in the can over a small fire or in a helmet of warm water. They were calorie-dense and nutritionally adequate. They were not particularly enjoyable after the first few times.
The K ration was even more compact, designed for paratroopers and soldiers in situations where carrying a full ration was not practical. The breakfast K ration included a small tin of chopped ham and eggs, a compressed cereal biscuit, a fruit bar, four cigarettes, a small piece of chewing gum, water purification tablets, and instant coffee. The whole thing fit in a waxed cardboard box roughly the size of a large paperback book. Soldiers appreciated the compactness. They were less enthusiastic about eating the same thing repeatedly for days on end.
Midday: The Main Meal
For soldiers in stable rear positions or base camps, the midday meal was the main event of the day and it reflected the genuine abundance of the American supply system. A typical mess hall lunch might include a meat dish such as roast beef, pork chops, or fried chicken, mashed potatoes or boiled potatoes, a cooked vegetable, bread, butter, and a dessert. Dessert was a consistent feature of American military feeding that surprised soldiers from other nations. Canned fruit, pudding, cake, or pie appeared regularly at the end of a meal in a way that simply did not happen in the British, Soviet, or German armies with anything like the same frequency.
Spam deserves its own mention here. Officially called spiced ham, Spam was produced by the Hormel company and supplied to the American military and through Lend-Lease to Allied forces in enormous quantities. American soldiers ate so much of it that it became a genuine grievance. It appeared fried for breakfast, cold in sandwiches at lunch, cooked into stews at dinner. It was versatile, shelf-stable, and ubiquitous to the point where soldiers developed a profound and lasting resentment toward it. Ironically, in countries receiving it through Lend-Lease where food was genuinely scarce, Spam was considered a luxury.
In the field, midday often meant another C ration or K ration, eaten wherever the soldier happened to be. The lunch version of the C ration included meat and vegetable hash, meat and noodles, or pork and beans. Crackers, a candy disc, and instant lemon or orange powder for mixing into water were also included. The powdered citrus drink, which soldiers called various unflattering names, was another consistent object of complaint despite being nutritionally useful.
One item that genuinely boosted morale was the D ration, a compressed chocolate bar developed specifically for the military. It was not designed to taste like a normal chocolate bar. The army had specifically requested that it not taste too good, to prevent soldiers eating it as a snack rather than saving it for genuine emergencies. It was dense, slightly bitter, and resistant to melting in high temperatures. Soldiers ate it anyway, emergency or not.
Evening: Supper
In mess hall conditions, supper was another full cooked meal. The American army operated on the principle that soldiers should receive three hot meals a day whenever the situation permitted, which was a more ambitious standard than most other armies set for themselves. Evening meals included dishes like beef stew, macaroni and cheese, corned beef hash, or roast pork. Fresh bread was baked in field bakeries that followed the army and delivered loaves forward as often as supply allowed. Cold milk from powdered reconstituted milk or occasionally from local sources appeared on the table in rear areas.
In the field, supper was the third iteration of the C or K ration of the day and by this point most soldiers were eating purely out of necessity rather than any enthusiasm for the food itself. The dinner version of the C ration included meat and vegetable stew or pork and beans. The K ration dinner included a tin of processed cheese or sausage, more crackers, a bouillon cube for making a hot drink, another four cigarettes, and a small chocolate or caramel candy.
Hot coffee remained available even at the front through the use of the Immersion Heater, a device that allowed large quantities of water to be heated quickly in the field. Mobile coffee distribution to front-line units was taken seriously by the American army as a morale measure and soldiers noticed and appreciated it.
The 10 in 1 Ration
Beyond the individual C and K rations, the American army also developed the 10 in 1 ration, designed to feed a squad of ten men for one day. It was considerably more varied and more satisfying than the individual rations, including items like canned ham, canned bacon, canned butter, jam, evaporated milk, soluble coffee, sugar, hard candy, crackers, and cigarettes. When a unit received 10 in 1 rations it was generally considered a good day. Soldiers could pool the contents and actually cook something resembling a real meal rather than eating cold from individual tins.
How the American Soldier Ate Compared to Everyone Else
The caloric allowance for an American front-line soldier was officially set at around 3,500 to 4,000 calories per day, higher than any other major army in the conflict. Whether that was always achieved in practice depended on the supply situation, but the intent and the infrastructure behind it were genuine.
British soldiers who served alongside Americans frequently commented on the difference in ration quality, sometimes with admiration and sometimes with irritation. German soldiers who encountered American supply dumps during the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 reportedly stopped to eat from them during the advance, which was both a tactical problem and a telling indication of the gap in material conditions between the two sides by that point in the war.
The American soldier complained about his food constantly, as soldiers always do. He complained about powdered eggs, about Spam, about the K ration, about eating cold from a tin in a muddy foxhole in the rain. Those complaints were entirely legitimate. And they were also the complaints of a man who was, by the standards of every other army in that war, eating remarkably well.