Thanksgiving Then and Now
The 5th Armored Artillery Group was activated at Camp Young, California on the 5th of September 1942. The Division Artillery Command of the 5th Armored Division had been taken from the Division and redesignated 5th Armored Artillery Group, consisting of Colonel JOHN M. WILLEMS commanding, a staff of two officers, and an enlisted strength of seventeen. Since it was the first unit of its kind, it was an experiment by the War Department in the face of many difficulties not immediately apparent, which, however, began to appear very shortly after activation.
Beginning the first part of November all equipment, except organizational, was turned in. This included the dismantling of “The Palace”, our Command Post truck, which with continuous improvement, had become quite a modern office. On the l4th and l5th the Group moved to a staging area near Palermo, boarded the AORANGI on the l7th, and sailed for the United Kingdom on the l8th. The 5th Field Artillery Group docked and disembarked at Glasgow, Scotland, on the 9th of December and arrived by train in the Banbury / Bloxham area on the 10th. The luxury that confronted the men upon arrival at their billets was quite unexpected. Straw mattresses on beds in heated houses and huts with running water and showers readily available was a long step from living in the field in the mud, rain, and muck to which they were accustomed with no shelter other than pyramidal or pup tents. Malaria, jaundice, and the periodic epidemics of dysentery had taken their toll on the health and welfare of the men.
On the 31st of October the Group moved to an assembly area at Pierrepont in preparation for the crossing of the Moselle at Thionville by the 90th and the flanking of Metz by the 10th Armored. From the 8th to the l5th of November, the Group supported the 90th in establishing a bridgehead across the flooded Moselle and on the 15th crossed the Thionville bridge with Task Force CHAMBERLAIN of the 10th Armored. The Group supported the 10th, slashing through fanatical resistance until the last escape route out of the fortress city had been cut and the Division was relieved by the 90th lnfantry Division. The direction of attack of the 10th Armored was to be northeast with Saarburg as the objective. The Group Headquarters entered Germany for the first time on the 22nd of November 1944 with its Command Post in the village of Eft. On this date our forces were stopped by the dragons teeth and pillboxes of the Siegfried Switch Line between the Saar and Moselle Rivers. The 3rd Cavalry Group relieved Combat Command A on the 28th and the Group received the additional mission of supporting the Cavalry.
Thanksgiving 1945 – HOME!
“The Thanksgiving Day dinner is the meal of meals for the Army,†said Philadelphia native, Chief Warrant Officer Shawn M. Malinowski, the food service advisor with Multi-National Division – Baghdad. “There is no money, no effort, nothing wasted on this day.â€
While dining facilities feed a lot of mouths at every meal they serve, they can expect to see a significant increase in that number on Thanksgiving Day.
The Pegasus Dining Facility, near the MND-B headquarters, served approximately 2,500 people Thanksgiving dinner last year, when only 1,500 people were served at an average meal. This year the dining facility is serving approximately 2,500 people at an average meal, so it can be expected to serve anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people for the holiday meal, Malinowski said.
“Historically, Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most family-oriented meals that there is,” said Ray Miller, director of subsistence for DSCP, the agency that supplies meals to the military worldwide. “When you are deployed and you’re not with (family), … it’s a taste of home wherever you are.”
Hundreds of thousands of troops will dine on turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, assorted pies and more. While this all sounds very “Norman Rockwell” normal, there’s nothing normal about the amount of food needed to feed that many troops.
The employees sent 342,382 pounds of turkey alone. More than 15,000 containers of stuffing mix and about 13,000 containers of white potatoes will join nearly 120,000 pounds of shrimp and a combined total of 249,357 pounds of ham and beef, as well.
“It would be like 100 tractor-trailers pulling up outside your house to deliver Thanksgiving dinner,” Miller said, describing just how much food was sent to the Middle East for the dinner.
And at the back of the very last tractor-trailer would be the one thing needed to finish the meal in fine holiday tradition: nearly 163,500 pies.
As for those with no access to a dining hall, they’re not destined to eat the same old everyday field rations. They, too, will get a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day.
“We … have provided a special ration meal called an URG-E (unitized group ration – express),” Miller said. “It won’t be the turkey, but it’ll be a turkey meal. It’s our attempt to at least try to get something to the folks that are on the far end of the supply chain.”
