USA MREs (and TBH probably everywhere else in the world) have always been superior to the swill served up for the UK in both military and civilian institutions. And he would have been able to smoke a cigarette made for Real Men (although they were probably just as popular with nuns) rather than todays tar/nicotine controlled ones.
There is a big British Telecom research centre near me which is often referred to jokingly as “Rat Salad Park”; one reason being the quality of the food served up at the canteen.
I once ended up having to attend some “business breakfast” there where Openreach explained the benefits of VDSL to small businesses (which was a bit odd as they can’t deal directly with Openreach anyway) – they tried to serve up a traditional Northern European breakfast.
One of the items was a slice of a langæg (long egg) from Denmark; a clever idea where 6 eggs are combined into one long boiled egg which can easily stored on board ships/store cupboards with less risk of breaking/contamination. By the time it reached the table it had been broken into several pieces rather than neat slices – BT’s caterers had effectively managed to trash something that had survived a 500km journey within 5m of it arriving in the building.
If the poor blighters who still work there (especially those from other lands) have to put up with this I’m hardly surprised the UK’s telecoms infrastructure is in quite a sorry state…
