Fresh Fruit Every Day

In previous posts I have talked about how good the food is here. Soldiers who have deployed before and have long careers have told me, "I never at this good in the Army. Ever." For me, the best thing consistently is the fruit. Every meal, every day, there is fresh fruit. And in two of the three chow halls one to three kinds of fruit are cut when you walk up to the serving bars. A small south Asian man with a big knife cuts watermelon, pineapple, cantalope, and melon. So nearly every meal I am eating the fresh cut fruit. We also get plums, apples, bananas, grapes, kiwi, oranges, and grapefruit.

Last week I was eating with a few older soldiers and we were talking about going home. "We're never going to eat like this at home," said one of the sergeants. He was so right. Because even if we could eat like this, the price would be ridiculous. Here it's just part of daily life so we can eat like this and not think about the expense or whether eating like this means someone else is going without. We never asked for the particular array of fruits the Army provides and if they were gone tomorrow we would have no effective way to get our fruit basket back. The guys at remote bases get fresh fruit once in a while, some more than others, but nothing like here.