Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Mermite Cans

One of the duties of the boys in the 4th form was to leave the school by the back door and go the right crossing the parking lot to a NATO Mess hall. The facility was always very hot steamy and humid. People in white stained tee-shirts with white cloth hats rushed about. The two boys designated for the run would pick up the sealed mermite can and carry it back to the school and to the school basement that served as the cafeteria.

The plate and bowls were light brown and similar in texture to bakalite. The two carriers usually were responsible for serving as well. The students of the school would be lined up in the hallway on the ground floor and closely supervised by the teachers. The students would file into the basement after the mermite can was open and ready to serve.



I recall the contents were either a stew or soup. For some strange reason the split-pea and ham soup I distinctly remember but I can not recall if was because the soup was really good or terrible bad.

The picture is not of the mess hall in question but it is close. I do recall that it had 4 huge boiling soup pots .

Daphne rembered them too: "Just to let you know that I also used to collect the soup in those huge cans from the kitchens next to us, in fact I still bear the scar on my ankle where the can hit it! The soup that used to freak us out most was oyster, because it was made with mostly milk with little grey oysters bobbing around in it - gross. My next door neighbour in Italy was one of the chefs who worked in the kitchen."

1 comment:

  1. this all changed when I was there which was about 4 years later. We used to bring our own lunches to school and sit and eat them in the classrooms - I particularly remember sandwich spread.....also playing '2 ball' and '3 sticks' against the walls outside and getting 'jungle juice' put on cuts when you fell in the playground, by Mr Ward (who had a glass eye) and Sqdn Ldr Tomlinson was Headmaster.

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