America's North Shore Journal

Sea­man Tim­o­thy Wienke, hos­pi­tal corps­man, Police Men­tor­ing Team, 1^st Bat­tal­ion, 3^rd Marine Reg­i­ment, and Cpls. Car­los Mar­tinez and Car­los J. Orel­lana, mil­i­tary police­men, PMT, 1/3, chop veg­eta­bles, sea­son meat and cook sides at the Patrol Base Jaker cus­tom field kitchen, Dec. 5. Marines built the kitchen area at Jaker by hand and they say it pro­vides them the lux­ury to cook and eat some­thing other than field rations while liv­ing Nawa District's bazaar. Wienke, 21, is from Chicago, Mar­tinez, 22, is from Roma, Texas, and Orel­lana, 22, is from Hous­ton. Photo by Sgt. Brian Tuthill

When Marines hear they must live at a small patrol base for a long period of time, many think of prim­i­tive facil­i­ties, dirty con­di­tions and bland, prepack­aged meals com­ing from brown bags.

For Marines with the Police Men­tor­ing Team assigned to the 1^st Bat­tal­ion, 3^rd Marine Reg­i­ment, liv­ing on Patrol Base Jaker near the Nawa District's bazaar means good eats. Dozens of Marines of Alpha Com­pany, 1/3, and Char­lie Com­pany, 1^st Bat­tal­ion, 5^th Marine Reg­i­ment, skipped the reg­u­lar meal lines, Dec. 5, and fol­lowed their stom­achs to the impro­vised wood stove kitchen on camp, where Sgt. Juan A. Flo­res and his team were fry­ing chicken, cook­ing rice and top­ping it all with fresh pico de gallo over Afghan flat bread. Their fresh ingre­di­ents were pur­chased from the bazaar ear­lier that day.

The 1/3 Lava Dogs liv­ing at Jaker inher­ited the kitchen from the Marines of 1/5, from whom they recently took over the area. The hand-built, dual-burner stove is made from engi­neer stakes, bar­rier steel wire grates, British mil­i­tary ammu­ni­tion cans and para­chute cord.

"Before we made it in Octo­ber, every­one had their own lit­tle cook­ing areas when we first got here, so we con­sol­i­dated them into one big one," said Cpl. Michael H. Gobel, a humvee dri­ver for Char­lie Com­pany, 1/5, who helped con­struct the kitchen.

"We looked through the junk pile and scav­enged parts to build with," said Gobel, 21, from El Cajon, Calif. "I used it to cook on every night I was here. It was way bet­ter than the usual chow and I'm glad we're able to pass it on the 1/3 Marines so they can enjoy it."

"Out here, real chow halls are not eas­ily acces­si­ble, so you rely on your Marine inge­nu­ity to make things bet­ter," said Flo­res, PMT pla­toon sergeant and a 28-year-old from Los Ange­les. "We want to live as com­fort­ably as pos­si­ble, and din­ner is a big deal to all of us. Prepar­ing a meal together, cook­ing together and eat­ing together – it's just like family."

Flo­res said he was very happy to see a kitchen already in place on the camp, sav­ing his Marines the effort of build­ing one. Before his team deployed from Mil­i­tary Police Com­pany at Camp Pendle­ton, Calif., he had already dreamed of mak­ing his own meals while deployed.

"When I was deployed to Iraq last year, my staff [non-commissioned offi­cer in charge] wanted to make life bet­ter and decided we were not going to eat [Meals, Ready-to-Eat] every day if we can avoid it. We were liv­ing in a house with the Iraqi police as we trained them, so we bought and rented pots and pans, a stove – every­thing we would need to make a good din­ner every night.

"Pretty soon, we had infantry Marines from down the street fight­ing to come over to our house for din­ner," said Flores.

Meals usu­ally start early in the after­noon with PMT Marines chop­ping veg­eta­bles, gath­er­ing wood scraps, prepar­ing and sea­son­ing meat, clean­ing pots and pans, and buy­ing last-minute ingre­di­ents. Their sea­son­ings and spices are mostly col­lected and donated from care pack­ages. "Out here we can grill it, boil it, bake it or fry it," said Flores.

Flo­res admits his team's cui­sine has a Mex­i­can bias, since his main chef and more than half of his Marines are Mexican-American or mar­ried to His­panic women. Judg­ing by the crowd and smiles on faces of Marines gath­ered around the kitchen, nobody seems to mind.

For other Marines like Cpl. Car­los J. Orel­lana, PMT, 1/3, who are not as expe­ri­enced with cook­ing, they take it as a great oppor­tu­nity to learn.

"It's excit­ing for me to be able to do this here," said Orel­lana, a 22-year-old from Hous­ton. "I cooked a lit­tle back home, but this is cook­ing in the raw. It's a whole new expe­ri­ence and I'm going to learn a lot, too.

"What's great about this is that it all comes down to tak­ing care of peo­ple," said Orel­lana. "If some­one says, 'Wow! This is really good!' then that made every­thing worth it for us."

As the PMT Marines begin train­ing local Afghan national police forces, they won't always be at Jaker to cook, but when they are, "you'll see us cook­ing," said Orellana.

DVIDS
Story by Sgt. Brian Tuthill