A PT boat crew grabs a bite in the galley near Bougainville Island in the South Pacific on March 31, 1944.
Author Kent Whitaker, left, with son Macee and wife Ally.
A member of the Women’s Army Corps demonstrates her baking skills at Fort Oglethorpe.The Krystal Chik was officially introduced in 1998, but a new book reveals the sandwich created by the Chattanooga-founded fast-food chain actually made its debut during World War II.
“Bullets and Bread: The World War II Story of Feeding Americans at Home and on the Battlefield,” by Chattanooga author Kent Whitaker, also discloses that England’s Queen Mother desperately needed her Tabasco sauce during the war, that the Allies concealed their use of radar with a convincing story of their carrot-rich diet in the accuracy of bombing runs, that M&Ms were introduced in 1941 as a candy for American GIs, and that Adolph Hitler fancied cream cakes.
The author, who has written several cookbooks and is a self-described foodie, says he was in a store in Dahlonega, Ga., in 2008 when a mention about one of his previous cookbooks led to a conversation in which several military veterans began talking about their escapades with food during their recent time in the service.
“That’s neat — wow,” Whitaker remembers thinking. “Somebody needs to write these down.”
That somebody turned out to be him, though his History Publishing Co. helped him narrow the focus to WWII. The book is part veterans’ memories, part cookbook and part narrative about food’s involvement in various aspects of the war, from rations to food on trucks, planes and ships to homefront victory gardens.