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Army food: You could eat it ... if you had to
Chewing on the hard tack produced nearly the same result as gnawing on a notebook pad.
It was hard and utterly tasteless.
"Try it in the beans," offered Sgt. Maj. Robert Preston, one of a group of Fort Stockton re-enactors present at Old Fort Day Saturday at Historic Fort Stockton. "It should soften it up a bit and add a little taste."
Put into beans, you would suppose, should soften up the nearly rock hard biscuits that were a mainstay of field rations for 19th-century soldiers. Since the beans themselves tasted pretty good, you would think it would produce an edible taste in the hard tack.
You would be wrong.
Instead, the hard tack softened by the beans produced a taste that resembled something like eating congealed grease.
But you could eat it. If you had to - really had to.
"You have to remember, there was a total lack of technology that allowed them to keep food and cook food," said Sgt. Maj. Bob Bluthardt of San Angelo, who was one of several Fort Concho re-enactors at Old Fort Day. "The diet of the soldiers was controlled by several limiting factors. One was cost - the Army had a limited budget - and the second was limited nutritional knowledge."
Bluthardt added that soldiers in the field often ate better than they did when they were at a fort. As long as they could kill something.
But the hard tack sufficed for its purpose. Preston said the tasteless unleavened bread would expand in a person's stomach, producing a feeling of being filled up. Plus, hard tack was loaded with carbohydrates, which offered a lot of energy for soldiers tasked with lengthy patrols and not provided much in the way of accompanying supplies.
Meanwhile, back at the fort, the food wasn't much better. That's partly because the soldiers were left to their own devices.
"The soldiers cooked for themselves," Roberta Dunn said. "There was a lot of hard tack and beans for the soldiers."
The officers fared a little better, generally. And even if they didn't, they at least didn't have to cook for themselves: Soldiers who could cook were often identified and assigned to cook for officers, receiving preferential duty assignments as part of the bargain.
It wasn't just hard tack and beans at the fort back in the day. But what the soldiers ate had to be brought in, and at a remote garrison like Fort Stockton that meant what could be brought in on a wagon, about 1,000 to 1,500 pounds at a time, according to Preston.
Prior to the advent of refrigerated rail cars, the U.S. was a pork-consuming nation, Bluthardt said. That's because pork did a lot better dried, salted, pickled or smoked, the preferred ways for preserving meat and transporting it over long distances.
So faced with that, why didn't they just go out and kill something?
"Figure 200 to 300 men, who have to be fed three times a day, 365 days a year," Bluthardt said. "You killed it all. You played it out after a few years. Going and killing your food precluded any efficiency."
U.S. Army food in the 19th century may not have been good, but it was efficient. Even at remote outposts like Fort Concho or Fort Stockton, the Army wagons could provide enough to sustain garrisons of several hundred men.
Most meals, Bluthardt said, began with bread and coffee. While the rest of the food was unappetizing, the Army did seem to take some pride in producing good, fresh bread; most posts had a bakery, he said.
Breakfast added salt pork or bacon to the bread and coffee. Lunch, the really big meal of the day, might include a stew of meat (probably pork), and potatoes and onions, which were the most common vegetables.
Dinner was leftovers, for the most part, and bread and coffee, Bluthardt said. It was the smallest meal of the day.
"The Army had it figured right, better than we do today," he said. "Supper was served at 6 p.m. The work of the day was pretty much done. They were through with you."
Soldiers at Fort Stockton may have fared a little better than many posts. The Army leased 35 acres near Comanche Springs, Preston said, and on that land grew cantaloupes, tomatoes, okra, onions and watermelons.
The fresh tomatoes added a little bit of taste to the soldiers' monotonous diet. And the cantaloupes and watermelons were a luxury, one of few the soldiers enjoyed.
"The desertion rate was 20 to 30 percent," Bluthardt said. "When they caught the deserters, they asked them why they deserted. No. 1 was the harsh, physical discipline; second was the boring, backbreaking duty ... and third was the food."
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