An Army Moves On Its Stomach... And Lots of Coffee

From football playoffs to basketball madness, TCL Roku TVs are the best way to stream your favorite live sports. With all the biggest sports channels, a sports zone with all available games in one place and apps like iHeartRadio with sports podcasts such as The Herd with Colin Cowherd.

Cheering on your favorite team has never been easier. A big screen TCL Roku TV offers premium picture and sound quality so you'll feel like you're right in the action. Find the perfect TCL Roku TV for you today at go.tcl.com slash TCL Roku TV. Welcome back to Dealing Together. First caller? I bought three sweaters to get the fourth free. Oh you got fleeced.

Next caller? I traded my old Samsung at AT&T for a new Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and shows my plan. That's not a bad deal.

It is not. Our best smartphone deals. Your choice of plan. Learn how to get the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus with Galaxy AI on us with eligible trade-in. AT&T.

Connecting changes everything. Offers vary by device subject to change. S24 Plus 256 gigabyte offer available for a limited time. Terms and restrictions apply.

See AT2.com Samsung for details. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. It's a special thing to be a member of Navy Federal because they are a member-owned not-for-profit credit union that invests in its members with amazing rates and low fees.

That's why members could earn and save more every year. Plus they serve all branches of the armed forces, veterans, and their families. So if you're interested in becoming a member learn more at navyfederal.org. At Navy Federal Credit Union our members are the mission.

Insured by NCUA. This is our American Stories and we tell stories about everything here on the show. And this next one, well it's about something so many of us do every day. Americans drink about 400 million cups of coffee. The drink itself represents 75% of our yearly caffeine consumption. So needless to say this drink is important to us. It's also important to the U.S. military and today Richard Muniz our regular contributor and listener shares an entertaining story on the subject.

Take it away Richard. There's an old expression that goes that an army travels on its belly. Well if that's true then coffee is the lubrication that runs that army.

And if you've been in the military before you know this is very important. Coffee just makes it so much easier. I know when we deployed to the Gulf for instance we took cooking utensils. The only time we actually used those cooking utensils was once we made some french fries out of some potatoes we found. But the one thing that got used constantly was the coffee pot. Now we didn't take coffee with us but the first time anybody went to one of the local Arab towns just like that guess what they bought? Coffee.

And we'd make coffee every morning we got up. Some people didn't want to sit there and wait for it so what they just did was they heat up their water in their little canteen cups, put the instant coffee from the MRE packets in there, mix in a little bit of hot chocolate, a little bit of creamy sugar, hey no good coffee. Coffee has been a part of every armed forces that I know of. If you're a fan of the movie Master and Commander there's a scene where Aubrey's cabin boy comes up and says there's no more coffee and Aubrey says fine we'll drink tea.

Well it just shows you how important it has been. Now even during the civil war it was very important. Soldiers would ride home and they'd tell about the battlefield experiences and stuff like that but the word coffee was used more than anything else. One soldier rode home and he was complaining about lack of food, lack of morale, lack of this, lack of that but he specifically spelled out coffee.

In fact he said how can you possibly soldier without coffee? The Confederacy didn't have a lot of coffee to have. What they used to do was they would go out and they would trade with union soldiers.

When there was no fighting going on like that they would meet in a I guess a neutral zone if you want to call it that and they would trade. They would trade tobacco which they had plenty of for coffee. The average union soldier got well over 30 pounds of coffee a year as personal ration.

So they had the coffee was something the union got. All the way through World War I, coffee. World War II, coffee. In fact some of the most iconic images that came out of World War II concerned coffee. There was a GI, there's a little tin cup there and he's toasting the folks back home with a hot cup of coffee. With a hot cup of coffee. Very important.

Coffee has played a very important part for all of us. A friend of mine tells me a story. He was a navy not the army and now I need to qualify something here. I don't know how true this story is. I know nothing about ships. I know nothing about the traditions on ships and he tells me this story for all I know. Maybe he stole it from somebody else. Maybe he hallucinated. I don't know but it's such a cool story.

I'm gonna tell it to you anyway. He went through basic. He went through a school and all stuff and he did really really well and they said hey you did so well we're going to give you your choice of assignments. Well here's a Trekkie like Star Trek and if you can't have Jim Kirk's Enterprise or John Luke Picard's Enterprise you settle for the one you got. In this case the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise we have today. He wants the bridge of the Enterprise. Thinking it'll be a fat chance he ever gets it. Well guess what? He got it. Well apparently there was a tradition on the bridge of the Enterprise and like I said I've never tried to check this out so you know if there is great.

If there isn't forgive me. What happens on the Enterprise is this. The lowest ranking em on the bridge makes the coffee.

Okay that's pretty cool. Okay so he gets up there and he decides I am going to make the best cup of coffee the captain's ever had and he's got you know visions of promotions dancing in his head or whatever the case may be but he wants to make sure the captain never ever forgets him. So he goes out and he studies how to make coffee and he goes to the libraries reading every book he can find every article stuff like that. He goes to baristas who make coffee for a living and learns their secrets and whatnot. By the time he's finished the only two entities in the entire universe that know more about making coffee than him is God and the guy in the Folgers commercial. So he goes out there and his first day on the bridge he makes the coffee. The smell of coffee weapons of the bridge I mean it's phenomenal. Coffee smells, smells great. Okay the other tradition they had on the bridge was no one gets their cup until the captain gets his. Cool tradition well he's sitting there waiting for the captain and all that stuff because you know he's sitting there going oh yeah yeah the captain's gonna take it he's gonna look at it and he's gonna sit back in that chair and go oh yeah this is a cup of coffee. Well captain comes up captain on the bridge you know all that stuff captain comes up he's talking to everybody bores his cup of coffee and sits down in his chair and he's there talking he's got his reports in front of him which puts his cup of coffee there on on his armchair and he's reading the reports talking like that and then he reaches over here's the moment of truth picks up the coffee mug and takes a sip of it and he's sitting there expecting the captain to smile but that's not what happened the captain spews this coffee all over a master chief that's standing there drops the cup of coffee like it was a snake stands up and scans the bridge and his eyes locked on him and said what in the hell is wrong with you apparently there's two types of water spigots on a ship there's fresh water which is what you drink and then there's sea water which you use for other purposes he didn't know the difference when it came time for promotion time guess what they didn't forget him either and great job as always to Monty Montgomery for producing that piece and thanks to Richard Muniz for his story stories about coffee and coffee in the military particularly and again if you have stories to share with us we love hearing from listeners and we've got a bunch of great listener contributions go to our american stories dot com richard muniz's story coffee in the military here on our american story folks if you love the great american stories we tell and love america like we do we're asking you to become a part of the our american stories family if you agree that america is a good and great country please make a donation a monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters go to our american stories dot com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great american stories coming that's our american stories dot com from football playoffs to basketball madness tcl roku tvs are the best way to stream your favorite live sports with all the biggest sports channels a sports zone with all available games in one place and apps like i heart radio with sports podcasts such as the herd with colin cowherd cheering on your favorite team has never been easier a big screen tcl roku tv offers premium picture and sound quality so you'll feel like you're right in the action find the perfect tcl roku tv for you today at go.tcl.com slash tcl roku tv are you looking to step up to a 4k smart tv one that gives you unparalleled clarity and picture resolution then we've got good news for you because the visio 65 inch v series 4k smart tv is now just 348 with all your favorite apps built in you can stream straight out of the box you can even sing along to all your favorite music and radio on the i heart radio app looking for a smaller or bigger screen visio offers unbeatable prices on all v series 4k smart tvs head to walmart.com today and score the 4k tv you've been waiting for hey hey it's malcolm gladwell host of revisionist history ebay motors is here for the ride your elbow grease fresh installs and a whole lot of love transformed a hundred thousand miles and a body full of rust into a drive entirely its own brake kits led headlights whatever you need ebay motors has it and with ebay guaranteed fit it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time every time or your money back plus at these prices you're burning rubber not cash keep your ride or die alive at ebaymotors.com eligible items only exclusions apply