David White – Disproportionate importance of food
Well, food takes on the most disproportionate importance you can imagine. Six weeks at sea, especially in a bomber where, a Polaris Submarine, you dive the whole time, not like every couple of weeks you might go in somewhere for a run ashore or a jolly.
Days and nights just meld into one long Patrol and the only things that happen, three times a day that’s different is food and so people do, it takes on a disproportionate importance, it’s the strangest thing, and I’ve got loads of recommendations upstairs that said he was a good Chef and, because every time you leave a ship you get a write-up, and I actually got head-hunted one time, but anyway, to get back to it, it’s important but so long as you care you can, you know, the old adage is what’s the choice today Chef, take it or leave it?
I’ve always despised that. I mean you cannot expect the whole crew to like one thing, so of course you’re going to put choices on, you have to. In the old days, certainly my dad’s day, there was no choice, there was no Chef.
One of the Sailors just opened up loads of tins of meat and put it in a pot with veg, stirred it all up, they called it Pot Mess and that was it.
It was hot and there was plenty of it, so that was fine but there is no excuse for that in modern submarines with great big fridges, great big freezers. I mean storing a ship, to store a submarine to go to sea is phenomenal evolution.