T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK
Ed Davis, right, is the St. Clairsville American Legion’s February Veteran of the Month. He is shown with Legion Adjunct Rick Johnson as he reflects on his work helping to develop new, less perishable food and rations for the troops.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Napoleon Bonaparte said an army marches on its stomach, and Ed Davis, St. Clairsville American Legion’s February Veteran of the Month, has done his part in keeping American troops supplied with foodstuffs.

Davis’s military service occurred in a laboratory in Chicago from May 1959 to April 1961. The private first class with the U.S. Army spent his stint developing military rations and methods of food storage. Before and after Davis volunteered for the draft, he had a career at Nickles Bakery. The government found his skills useful.

“I graduated from the American Institute of Baking Science and Technology,” he said. “I volunteered for the draft after I got out of school. I knew I was going to go, and I wanted to get it over with.”

Some of the research he worked on included in-flight space feeding for astronauts. He also worked on experimental foods for the Army.

“We developed things they’re eating now. They weren’t eating it when we were working on it,” Davis said. “Some of the stuff they’re eating up there in space, we developed.”

He added that one of the goals of the program he served was to improve on World War II rations.

“Everything was canned and greasy. It was edible,” he said of the foods provided to troops in the 1940s.

“We did everything. We worked on a system that would bake bread instantly,” he said. “You’d take flour and water and put it in a mixer and it mixed it and you dropped it in a pan and went through an oven. It didn’t have to raise or anything and it came out a beautiful loaf of bread, but unfortunately it didn’t taste that good, so it never went anywhere.”

The lab had numerous divisions dealing with meat and dairy hygiene, dehydrated vegetables, effects of radiation and containment.

“They tested air-delivery. They had what looked like a bomb, and it had corrugated cardboard in it that absorbed the shock,” he said.

Davis’s division focused on food storage and preservation. Some of the challenges he faced included producing food that could be stored for long periods of time and kept and prepared in a wide variety of environments. He worked on both ready-to-eat meals and freeze-dried food, pointing out the advantage of freeze-dried food was its lighter weight. Many of the experimental food products were stored for three years at high temperatures before being deemed a success.

“You had a little can that weighed 3 ounces and you put a quart of water in it and you had a spaghetti dinner, and the stuff was good. I lived on a lot of it,” he said. “The main things that make things age well are moisture content, acidity, sugar. That’s the main three.”

His fellow veterans at the St. Clairsville Legion added that they had lived on many of those rations during their terms of service.

Davis related one story in which Allied officers from Vietnam toured the lab facilities and had an unwelcome experience with the spices.

“The officers came in from Vietnam. They eat hot food,” Davis said, adding that the lab technicians were experimenting with hot peppers at the time. “They were cocky…’We like hot,’ (they said). Unfortunately he took a big pinch of it, chewed it in his mouth and he instantly turned red and broke into a sweat.”

By the end of his term of service, Davis had helped the government secure patents on three different canned rations. He said many of the techniques developed in that military lab have found their way into civilian use.

“We worked with people who would develop it. Once we came up with a product that was OK, somebody would have to make it. We dealt with Procter and Gamble, all the big food manufacturers — Kroger, American Brands,” he said.

“They had taste panels, and of course everything you did had to go into a taste panel,” he said. “If you wanted to get something OK’d pretty quick, make it hot and sweet. They liked sugar and they liked pepper.”

After his term of service, he moved to St. Clairsville and worked at the local Nickles Bakery until 1966, followed by self-employment. He has been retired for eight years.