Smokes?

[b3196]

Keith
I cant tell you what I traded my cigarettes for, but it sure wasnt chocolate...... I remember Wings, they were the discount cigarette of the 60's
Bob K

[catman]

Sid...never heard of the chocolate that you speak of, but they used to put a brownie in the MRE's that could double as an anvil. Might be one of the same!

Trav

[Jerry D]

Yep, that Chocklate nut cake in the MRE was a dry, high calorie item of food, you needed lots of water to wash it down

[revwardoc]

BobK,

You used to trade cigarettes, I used to bring along extra pro-kits when I went into Angelese City, PI to "visit" some of the local "ladies". They thought it was great to grab the extra penicillin pills, amongst other things!

[Packo]

Bloch Brothers Tobacco, makers of "Mail Pouch", used to send free chewin' tobacca to Vietnam for all of us. Never saw any, so I thing it musta been sold off on the black market, but they were the only ones sendin' free tobacca that I recall.

The only times I got tropical chocolate was in LRRP rations. Hard to eat and would block up your system, which was a good thing at times. Only got LRRP'S twice that I remember. Had the chicken and rice and the spaggetti, which I ruined. Only had hot coffee, no other hot water so I just dumped the coffee into the bag figuring it all goes down the same hatch. Man was that awful, but ate it anyway. The other chocolate was round and in the bottom of the can. It tasted great to me at the time but pound cake was my favorite. I would smoke whatever I could over there...wasn't picky, but when I would buy them it would be either Marlboro's, Winston's, or Kools.

Pound Cake Pack

[b3196]

Pound Cake Paco
Pound Cake was good and the name fit the cake....If we only had cold milk to dunk it in
Bob K

[Andy]

Arrow,
How you come up with these sites is amazing. Once you listed them I remember all but the Kool's.

Sid,
I know this sounds like a bar room story but there was a cherry in our unit that chipped a front tooth. Claimed he did it while bitting into a John Wayne. We would have put those suckers on our vehicles as additional armor but we were more afraid of the ants who nested in the trees than Charlie. Can't you just see a half million of those red bastards dive-bombing our PC's?

Salem's were my favorite. I'd never smoke the damn things but we had a Kit Carson attached to us. I'd collect as many C-rat packs of Salem's as I could and then give them all to him. When we'd go through a town he be standing around smoking, looking all stud. The boy got me hooked up with a lady, more than once. It's good to make friends.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[MontanaKid]

That was my experience with MREs when I was in the guard 89-93. The "cake" was more like they had mixed in nuts with the batter, wrapped it in plastic and then let it all dry in the sun. It was meant as just a simple intake of high-sugar calories. not much concession given to culinary delight. Sort of as if your mom let you scrape out the cake mix bowl, after it had dried.

[exlrrp]

I stated smoking Chesterfield Kings in The Nam becaus of their availability--Sundry packs had 10 cartons in them and 2 of them would be Chesterfield Kings.
Everybody else would be arguing over splitting up 2 cartons of Winstons or Marlboros among 10 people while I'd just rucksack the CKs.
You could depend on the 101st to be late for resupply so at the end of the cycle, I'd be trading back packs of CKs for peaches and poundcake. I smoked CKS all the way up to the time I quit (1974--Yay!!)
Can you believe they even put cigarettes in LRRP rations?? Sorta failure to grasp the concept there but maybe the concept was to get evryone addicted in which case it was superb.
As for tropi9cal chocolate, that was one of the things if you tossed to a Vietnamese kid, they wouldm toss it back at you, you numbah hucking ten GI!
Stay good all
James

[1CAVCCO15MED]

I was the guy in the whole of Vietnam that liked the tropical chocolate bars. I have even tried to find them on the internet.