This week I was visting with a vendor – Canada Plating of Dallas, Texas. Roscoe and his two son’s Randy and Larry have been provides anodizing services for my company for years. Being in the metals finishing business and an expert on color anodizing I decided to visit with Randy about aluminum military dog tags. While we were discussing some of the chemical processes used to make military dog tags from WWI and WWII, Randy’s brother Larry came into the plant and sat down and joined in on the conversation.
During the conversation we were discussing the venerable P-38 can opener when Larry chimed in that he remembered those little can openers but what he liked was the large P-51 can openers. He said that the P-51 was like gold over in Vietnam, while every C-Rat box shipped with the P-38, the P-51 was much harder to get.
Larry said that he used to get the P-51’s and he would hoard them up and pass them out the the guys he served with. The P-51 was prized by those that were able to lay their hands on one as they were larger and allowed one to open cans easier than with the P-38.
I asked Larry how come him to have such intamate knowledge of the P-51 and he said it was simple, he was a cook and much of his time was spent serving the men in the field. He used to prepare “T-Rats” or T Rations and the P-51 was packed with the “T-Rats”. Larry also said that the P-51 was great for opening the large 1 gallon metal cans that much of the food was packed in.
We want to say to Larry as to all our veterans, thank you for your service to our country without your service and sacrafice we would not be the greatest nation on earth.