P-38 can opener

By Temple Ligon

In the summer of 1942 over a 30-day period at the Subsistance Research Laboratory in Chicago, Major Thomas Dennehy invented the P-38 can opener. The name came from the P-38 Lightning, a fighter plane made by Lockheed, or maybe it came from the can opener’s size, 1.5”, which is 38 mm.

Although hung around the neck for one full year on just about every combat veteran since 1942, very few veterans talk about their can openers, those little 1.5-inch long jobs that opened just about every meal in the field, or on the front line, as we night patrol types called the turf. But the P-38 was important, exceedingly important – more in service among the front line troops than the M-16 or the M-79 grenade launcher. Looking back, not every veteran has the perspective of experience in both the secure rear areas and the front line, but the combat troop certainly does.

Fact is, only about 10% of the troops in South Vietnam were actually in the combat arms, and even then very few went on patrol as a moving target for the AK47s or as a sleeping target for the RPGs, rocket propelled grenades. The support services, the barracks bed riding element composed of REMFs – an acronym taken from Rear Echelon Mother F****rs – rarely needed the P-38 can opener because they were fed at the mess hall or the officers club or the enlisted ranks’ equivalent. Their can openers were electric. The enlisted men had better clubs because there were more of them to establish a critical mass that resulted in better food and better looking waitresses. Still, an officer myself, I and my hill-humping and rice-paddy-soaking war-torn brethren all lived out of the can, or C-rations, as they were called from World War II and after every fire fight in the Vietnam War.

In South Vietnam in 1969 we were at a turning point in field rations. The C-ration cans were giving way to freeze-dried food readily reconstituted in the field as long as the water was potable. And even if it was not, halizone tablets would clear out all that might disrupt the lower digestive tract. In a hurry, most troops on patrol kind of preferred the less tasty old fashioned C-rations over the freeze-dried because the can could be cut open with the trusty P-38 and the meal spooned out in short order – no waiting for the beans in the chili to soften up.

Back in the World, like now, short-ordered food was not the finest dining, and in the field the short time spent spooning a C-ration can was also not the best available. The worst available, I bet most vets would agree, was ham and mothers, which is acceptably altered language. The real name was ham and lima beans, but invariably the surrounding conditions would not allow a heat tablet fire – too much light – so the limas had to be eaten cold. Then the night’s meal took on a less acceptably altered name: ham and mother f****rs.

Whether it was ham and mothers, spaghetti and meatballs, beef stew, whatever, nothing could be eaten without a can opener, and in the field the opener was typically hanging on a chain between two dog tags. The P-38 gave life, and the dog tags were ready for death; that is, the tags were there for body identification.

Such close connection among millions of veterans deserves commemoration. We have the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, and we have a wall of South Carolina’s war dead in Memorial Park in Columbia on Washington Street. What we don’t have is that common memory of ham and mothers and its accompanying P-38 commemorated among the heroes.

The artist Claes Oldenburg is still kicking at 85 and he is still cranking out oversized sculpture. At the National Gallery in Washington Oldenburg’s Typewriter Eraser is on display, which needs to be seen for not only its artistic value but also for its outrageous jump in scale. The scale is outrageous, but such a leap in dimensions is necessary to separate art from mere depiction. For a local outrageous jump in scale, the little (1.5” long) P-38 needs to expand to maybe 8’-0” long, or high, as it would be standing to reach the 8”-0” height, suitable for walking around.

Please understand: The whole world would be watching as our 8’-0” high P-38 is sculpted and installed. And the world’s veterans of the combat patrol or the isolated outpost, since the P-38 has a worldwide acceptance, would enjoy the reminders they gladly don’t have to do that anymore. To them the P-38 ranks in life’s progress right up there with first girl or first automobile. Yeah, it’s Pop Art, all right, but it has enough Pop to pull in the world.

Oldenburg shouldn’t mind.