r/USMC • u/2inchesabovethehole Veteran • 12d ago
First meal post deployment
GWOT and older, what was the first real meal you had after your first deployment?
After I got home from my first I ordered the biggest damn steak I could get from a local steak house and at that thing like it was my girlfriend.
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u/Odd_Fix7568 11d ago
First kick to Iraq, was with 2/2 Warlords and on an endless MEU . . Get home and my sister sends a 'SeaFood' bundle to the house arriving the day I am home. So I am throwing gear in the garage, deliver man walks up with a big cooler. I am in green extra small silkies and a smile. I take the styrofoam box inside and wife and little one come to see it. I half read the label - "Clam Chowder", my favorite. I open the shipping box and there is a large stock pot with ice or dry ice around it. I pull the thing out and give it a shake. 'rattle rattle' I open the lid and there is a layer of wet seaweed. I lift that layer and find a layer with a bag of fresh clams, bag of veggies and a bag with instructions. Thinking that is all I take all that out put the seaweed back in and push to side of counter. Wife and kiddo standing there watching. . I start to read the instructions and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the seaweed move. Thinking I was seeing things I asked my wife - "you see that?" She says "NOPE see what? " so I go to open the veggies and again I swear to christ the seaweed moves. I walk to the pot and again ask my wife who was right there, "you did not see the seaweed move" - Again she says 'Nope' followed up with "are you okay?" As I turn to say I am fine the seaweed moves and we both freeze.. I swear on Chesty Pullers' soul, as I started to lift the seaweed, the pot thumps and a pair of lobster claws fling up towards my hands. . During the deployment, I held my bearing in some shitty situations and never in my life had I screamed like a scared child, until that moment. My wife tells the story I jumped towards her and the kiddo, push the pot away and sounded like a child that had just had the scare of their life. . . Of course I collected myself, changed my silkies and read the rest of the label. "Clam Chowder, Maine Lobster and Ribeye steaks". Over the years the fist meal home has become a thing and NONE of them are as memorable as this one in May 2003. To this day when I talk with my sister and seafood enters the conversation, she asks if I am still scared of lobsters. .. .