I'm really pained by what inmates at the Summit County Jail are enduring with having to eat brown bag lunches for each meal during a renovation of the jail's kitchen. Hopefully you read my sarcasm there. It's giving me flashbacks, and not in a good way.
During the first 30+ days of the Iraq war in the spring of 2003, most of the guys in my unit would have given anything for the bag lunches these inmates are whining about. We had
very little refrigeration and marginal rations to the point that many of us survived on cold ravioli eaten directly from a can and boxes of raisins shipped from our relatives in the U.S. I lost 20 pounds in a short period of time before the military's food provisions caught up to the wave of the invasion.
When I left Kuwait a year later, food service had progressed but was still lagging to say the least. I took a picture of my breakfast plate in the fall of 2003 to show folks back home what I was eating .. mostly because I wanted them to know that the plate in the photo was the same cold food (green scrambled eggs and a banana) that I'd been served for breakfast for many months .. and the exact same meal I would have in the days that followed. It never, ever changed. I haven't eaten a scrambled egg since I got back three years ago .. and I doubt I ever will again.
Even today, some of our troops who are stationed in small police buildings in Iraq are surviving on MREs and dry food sent from home. That's assuming they haven't given away their food to Iraqi children who beg for something to eat.
During the first 30+ days of the Iraq war in the spring of 2003, most of the guys in my unit would have given anything for the bag lunches these inmates are whining about. We had
very little refrigeration and marginal rations to the point that many of us survived on cold ravioli eaten directly from a can and boxes of raisins shipped from our relatives in the U.S. I lost 20 pounds in a short period of time before the military's food provisions caught up to the wave of the invasion.When I left Kuwait a year later, food service had progressed but was still lagging to say the least. I took a picture of my breakfast plate in the fall of 2003 to show folks back home what I was eating .. mostly because I wanted them to know that the plate in the photo was the same cold food (green scrambled eggs and a banana) that I'd been served for breakfast for many months .. and the exact same meal I would have in the days that followed. It never, ever changed. I haven't eaten a scrambled egg since I got back three years ago .. and I doubt I ever will again.
Even today, some of our troops who are stationed in small police buildings in Iraq are surviving on MREs and dry food sent from home. That's assuming they haven't given away their food to Iraqi children who beg for something to eat.
It's not that I'm cold to the lack of a food variety for hundreds at the county jail. But if the inmates' plight grabs at your heart strings, I hope you'll remember my brothers in arms who only wish they had it so good.
2 comments:
So, how can we help our troops? What kinds of food would be good to send and how can we do that?
I can't even begin to tell you how angry it makes me that the inmates have nerve enough to complain about their so-called food plight. It's pretty pathetic when prisoners are fed better than our soldiers!
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