Pawcatuck (AO 108) - Naval Cruise Book

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CHOW DOWN lcontinuedl Netto Burnett CM3 was the butcher on the cruise and performed this big job of cutting up the two hundred or more rations a meal and keeping the butcher shop clean despite the mess cooks. Very few of us stopped to ponder how much food is prepared in our galley every day. We say the William- sons eat a great amount but we forget that the rest of us eat a great deal too. For a crew of our size, we have a big appetite. Coffee making was almost a full time occupation for the cooks and strikers. We drank on an average of 40 to 50 gallons of coffee a. day. Cold drinks served on the average of two meals a day ran up to around 22 gallons a day. Meat was another large item. We ate at least 150 pounds of beef, ham, pork, chicken or turkey a day. We used 'about 175 lbs. of potatoes. Off hand I would say we put away about 1,950,222.5 tons of beans. Enough said for the beans. The diet was always varied with salad, meat of somie kind, potatoes, a vege- table, dessert, coffee or some iced drink. Few ships can boast of chow as good as ours, especially the big ships. By Navy tradition there are three hot meals a day and the schedule was carried out despite the Mediterrean climate. But, all was not work for t-he galley crew. Almost everyone went on the many tours to Rome, the Isle of Capri, the Riviera, Pompeii and Athens. They took some excellent photographs and Bunn especially has a good collection. The tour that seemed most popular was that of the inns. Most noteworthy are the Cove, the Red Lantern, the Zig Zag Club, the Snake Pit, the Arizona, the Nationale, and the American Bar. All places of out- standing reputation. . This was the galley during the Mediterranean Cruise. We may make the cruise again but never again with the same crew or with the same experiences. Whenever I go for chow now I do so with a much better idea of the men behind the line, and their work, three meals a day. I41I

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t CHOW DOWN I was a mess cook, so I know. Common opinion is that being sent to the galley is like being assigned to the slave galleys of old. Icdeny this and consider it valuable experience and an important department aboard ship. My knowledge of the galley starts midway in the 52 cruise to the Med. My comrades on mess cooking were: Zidy Zeidman, Larry Voelk, and the scullery gang: Killer Flack, Tarzan Kloss, Smitty Smith and the inimitable Speedy Wilson. The scullery gang were a hardworking lot in the small space where they washed the mess gear and the sun of the Med didn't make it any easier. Every Monday afternoon mess cooks carry stores from the forward provisions store- room aft to the chill boxes and issue room. It's a long trek through hatchways, over hose lines, under low overheads. It's a tough haul but many is the time they each carried extra boxes of stores for a buddy who was behind in his trips. I always tried to see that they were well provided for in the chowline. Leonard Zidy Zeidman was a spud coxswain. I will always remember the picture of him struggling up the narrow ladder to 02 deck with a hundred pounds of crated potatoes on his back Even though spuds are now in sacks instead of crates, this is still quite a feat when performed several times a day by spud coxswains. Larry Voelk made salads and was an associate spud coxswain. He got his work out and then helped Zidy with the always mountainous pans of- Idahoes. They switched off serving the line so that each could get early liberty. Don Dinneen cut bread and butter, dished out dessert, swabbed decks and washed bulkheads with the finess that only a college degree could give. Enough for the mess cooks and on to the movers in the galleyg the captains of the watchg the cooks and cook strikers. In the Med there were two watch sections, two bakers and a butcher. One of the watch sections consisted of Bob Bunn CMSN and Loyd Wooten CM3, the other of Bill Taylor CM3 and Earl Whitehurst CMSN. Woot Wooten always backed up the mess cooks and strikers on the chowline, making sure that the line kept moving by renewing the supply of cold drinks, meat, potatoes, dessert and the like. Bunn was a good cook too and made wonderful gravy. Taylor had a passion for keeping fried eggs hot, so on mornings when fried eggs appeared on the menu, the galley would be in an uproar, preparing everything for early chow. Then by an assembly line setup, bacon or ham would be put by the eggs on the tray at the stove and handed out to the crew. It was really a great scheme because there is nothing quite as bad as a cold fried egg. Whitey , an ex-cop from Norfolk, must have gotten a taste for pickles and roast beef in one of the joints on his beat, for he used to give us that combination every night for mid rations. The bakers, Robert Toi Tolison, CMSN, and Theadore Jasper Miller, CM3, 'rose at four o'clock every morning to bake fresh bread and pastries. Sometimes they worked all night to get- ahead on bread, especially when we had passengers aboard. Tol's specialty was a terriiic coffee cake which he put out with coffee as a snack before early morning fueling. I40l

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