Those of you unfamiliar with C rats might well question how dining on something with rat in the name could produce loving memories. Those familiar with C rats might be even more astonished, even nauseated, by the thought of both C rats and the idea that anyone likes them.

Let’s start from the beginning. C rats were the canned rations given to US soldiers in World War II, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War. They probably changed over the years, but the idea remained the same. Food in small cans, with several cans making up a meal. The cans were light and easily carried in the field. No cooking required, so they were good to have in bad weather or when the enemy was too close. Most soldiers hated C rats. They weren’t up to the level of your mom’s cooking, even if you had the type of mother who had a permanent scorch mark on the ceiling above her stove. No, they weren’t that good. And, sad to say, many soldiers hated C rats, because they hated the situations in which they were forced to eat them.

My father, a career soldier, hated C rats like everyone else. He had eaten plenty during the Korean War; a time in which he lived under almost constant gun fire: from sniper shots to full on battle, while taking hills, and when his jump team went behind enemy lines to set up communications for the Second Division. He had to eat them after seeing the mass graves in villages they had marched through as welcome liberators, retreated back through pushed by the North Koreans, and then marched through again, to take back territory to the north. Sometimes he recognized a few of the bodies that hadn’t gotten plowed all the way under. Teachers, doctors, lawyers - the educated people who had been the leaders in their towns and villages and had come out to welcome the Americans on their first march north. Yeah, Dad hated C rats.

One time after the war, when I was pretty young, Dad came back from several days of field exercises. Always thrilled to have Dad home, my brother and I crowded around to “help” him empty his field pack. Thus, we discovered C rats. Looking a little nauseated, Dad explained what they were. I wanted to try them, but Dad said they were awful. Undeterred, I insisted. So, Dad let my brother and me have some. We loved them.

Later that year, Mom asked what we wanted Santa Claus to put in our stockings. To her horror, we asked for C rats. She said she didn’t think that was a good idea, because Santa liked us to have an orange on Christmas morning. Nope, we insisted, we can have oranges any day, we want C rats. Maybe Santa didn’t have any, Mom said. How could that be, we questioned, he’s Santa, after all, isn’t he?

Christmas morning, we raced to our stockings and started digging. Those bothersome oranges sat at the top, but we tossed them aside like tennis balls and dug down through the small toys and candy to the C rats at the toes. Proficient with our church keys, we opened the cans and dug in. I have vague memories of fruit, chocolate, and something else. Dad turned away. He just couldn’t watch.

I think we got C rats the next year, too. After that my parents told us that Santa was out of C rats, and the Army wouldn’t fill his requisition for more. As Army kids, we accepted that. We were used to the Army’s mercurial ways. Over the following year, we occasionally asked for them, but our parents said that the soldiers needed them. Now that made sense to patriotic kids. We didn’t want our guys to go hungry. We wanted to do our part, even if it meant going without C rats.

Over the years, I’ve cherished my memories of getting C rats in my Christmas stocking. I don’t often say that, because my Viet Nam veteran friends retch if I mention them. Civilians don’t know what they are, and wouldn’t get it if they did know. Nevertheless, I still love the memory of them, because for me C rats are Dad coming home, and I love Dad.