You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

Stolen valor is apparently a thing nowadays. Posers hungry for affirmation will contrive exciting tales of their fabricated time in military service in an effort to impress girls or garner accolades they have not earned. That’s honestly pretty low. If you want folks to think you’re awesome, just put in the work. Faking that is just pathetic.

Delta Force and DEVGRU rightfully get all of the press. Kicking in doors is cool, and these guys are the world’s recognized masters at it. However, very few military veterans actually did anything at all like that.

Only about 10% of troops in uniform are actually trigger pullers. The rest of us carried the bullets, moved the real heroes around on the battlefield, provided fire support, or just generally made sure they had the stuff they needed to do that incredibly difficult job. Truth be known, much of that was not terribly compelling, but it had to be done.

In the Information Age, stories of military derring-do are never more than a click away. YouTube is dirty with interviewers teasing out the stories of Army Rangers, Delta shooters, and the like for an enraptured audience. There is a running joke in the military that baby SEALs are issued a book contract upon graduation from BUD/S. Whenever I have a mindless task to perform, I invariably open my laptop and run those stories in the background. I tell myself it is so I can find inspiration for my writing. Reality is that I just enjoy it.

So, how do you tease out the real veterans from the fake ones? It’s actually simpler than you might think. Just ask about a rock or something.

An Army Marches on Its Stomach

It is a soldier’s lot to gripe about his chow. Ever since the legionaries traipsed all the way across the known world, grunts have complained about their grub. Some of that was fully justified. In the Information Age, however, the American military’s food is actually quite good. That’s because, as a nation, we’re really, really rich.

Uncle Sam spends $3 million a pop on a modern TLAM cruise missile. He also invests a fair amount of time and treasure in keeping his modern grunts sustained in austere spaces. Leading that technological charge is the modern iteration of the MRE.

MRE is milspeak for Meals, Ready-to-Eat. We called them Meals, Refused-by-Ethiopians, but that’s not really fair. Early versions were pretty sketchy, but today’s fare is actually superb.

Origin Story

The first American military ration actually spawned as the result of a Congressional Resolution back during the Revolutionary War. Over time, those basic staples of beef, peas, and rice evolved into K-rations in World War II and canned C-rations or “C-Rats” in Vietnam.

In 1963, the Army began experimenting with Space Age packaging and preservation methods to make field rations lighter and more shelf-stable. Three years later, this led to the Long Range Patrol or “LURP” ration. LRP rations eventually begat modern MREs.

What really sets our grub apart is the fact that we can offer American troops three hot meals a day anywhere on Planet Earth. That’s because of a nifty widget included in every MRE today called the FRH — short for Flameless Ration Heater. We started including FRHs in every MRE in 1993.

The Beating Heart of the FRH

The FRH consists of iron and magnesium powder sprinkled with some table salt. Slide your MRE entrée into the included pouch along with a little water, and the FRH does its thing. A single FRH will heat an MRE entrée to around 140 deg F in about 12 to 15 minutes. In my not-insubstantial experience, these bad boys work like champs.

What makes this entire enterprise entertaining is the iconography used to explain how these devices are employed. There is a simple little cartoon printed on the side of the FRH pouch that walks you through the process. Once the FRH is charged with your grub, you fold the top of the pouch over and slip it back into the cardboard sleeve that contained your entrée. At that point, the entire assembly must be maintained at a specific angle for optimal performance. The cartoon recommends you use a “Rock or Something” to get this done.

That term, “Rock or Something,” has burrowed its way into the military lexicon. I have seen it on bumper stickers, morale patches, and even a few tattoos. I don’t have a better idea myself. It is simply that “Rock or Something” just seems a wee bit sophomoric. Reliable sources assert that it began as a bit of an inside joke among the good folks who developed these things in the first place and has now become legend.

So, the next time you bump into some rugged-looking dude who arouses your curiosity concerning his background, don’t ask about BUD/S, jump school, RIP, or Delta selection. Anybody with an internet connection can fake that. Just ask about a rock or something. That’s the easiest way to separate the players from the posers.