The saying goes, ‘an army marches on its stomach’, but in theory what does this actually look like? How is food prepared in a makeshift kitchen during deployment? Who coordinates getting fresh food to these kitchens? And how are military chefs trained to withstand such a high-pressure environment in the face of conflict?
Discover all this and more with Major Ruth Hayes OAM and Captain Brett Williams (Retd), who between them, have decades of experiences in the world of military catering.
Transcript
LAURA THOMAS: The saying goes, ‘an army marches on its stomach’, but in theory what does this actually look like? How is food prepared in a makeshift kitchen during deployment? Who coordinates getting fresh food to these kitchens? And how are military chefs trained to withstand such a high-pressure environment in the face of conflict?
In our final episode of the Taste of Combat podcast series, you’ll learn all this and more with not one, but two very special guests. The first is Major Ruth Hayes OAM. Ruth recently transferred to the Reserves after a long and varied career in the regular army where she worked more on the administrative side of the kitchen, overseeing a wide range of areas including training and the logistics of large-scale catering events.
Her husband, Captain Brett Williams started out in the kitchen before making his way up the catering ranks over his 39-year career before discharging in 2019. They met in service, married, and now Ruth and Brett join me know to chat about their experiences in the catering world of defence. Good morning, Ruth and Brett.
RUTH HAYES: Good morning, Laura
BRETT WILLIAMS: Good morning, Laura. Thank you.
LAURA THOMAS: I want to start off hearing a little bit about how you got into the world of catering in the Army. Did you both always want to be involved in this side of the Army?
RUTH HAYES: For myself, no. I was actually at Teachers College studying to be a home economics teacher, and as you do, you need some cash. So, I was doing some waitressing, teaching swimming, and I joined my local Army reserve unit. I was having so much fun with my Army reserve experience that I applied to join the regular army, and that's how my journey started.
LAURA THOMAS: And what about you, Brett?
BRETT WILLIAMS: My dad was a baker, and so I'd go jobbing there when I was 13, 14, wagging a bit of school and a friend of mine, his uncle was in the Army Reserve at Port Augusta in South Australia. And as soon as they said, tax free money, I was in. And it's like one of those blocks that fit, it was good. So, I finished my bakery apprenticeship, and then I applied for the regular army, and they accepted me.
LAURA THOMAS: So, as I mentioned in the introduction, you've both had very different careers, both very long and very successful. So, I was hoping you could give me a brief overview of where these careers took you.
RUTH HAYES: For myself, I went through the last all female officer training at a place called WRAAC school, the Royal Women's Australian Army Corps, and we were back then known as WRAAC, so we weren't allocated to a particular corps. Towards the end of our 12 months, you were given an option to elect where you would like to go. And I chose catering because of my hospitality bit of background, but also transport, because I was a truckee to start with, in the reserve and RAEME, I was very lucky, and I was allocated to be a catering officer. So, from there, I guess in the main I'm not hands on, so I'm not a qualified cook. I do have an associate diploma in Hospitality Management, so it's predominantly the personnel side, the training side, working at a headquarter level rather than hands on. There was a posting where I was the mess manager at Victoria Barracks Sydney. I think a lot of people would have a little bit of an understanding of Vic Barracks Melbourne, Sydney, quite prestigious, and it was a lot of hard work, but it was a really fun experience.
LAURA THOMAS: What would a regular day in that job look like?
RUTH HAYES: Pretty much like a function and banquet manager. There were the messes both at the Victoria barracks and Randwick barracks. So, you had the OR's messes, the sergeant's and the officer's messes. You had the fine dining in the officer's mess, and you had more of the bulk cooking responsibility in the sergeant's and the OR's messes. You had stewards in the Army back then. So, we managed the dining rooms, the bars. You had flambe silver service for special functions. There were wine cellars down under the parade ground, and we would have special little functions down there. Yeah. So, it was a very fun experience, full on. I was a bit concerned at one point, one of the sergeants, because we had so many functions one particular fortnight that he was ordering in some Sara Lee product and I 'Uh uh, we do it all from scratch. You're all more than capable of it'. And the next day, a signal arrived for a posting order for a new cook. Private S Lee. I was a tad slow, I went 'But we've got full compliment. We're not expecting to get any new posted members. And he just looked at me and I went, 'Oh, okay, Sara Lee, yes, order the stock if you need to, if we're busy'.
LAURA THOMAS: Gosh, it sounds like you must have had your head in a million different places at once.
RUTH HAYES: Yes. But people in catering seem to be really go getters, and can do like when the going gets tough, we know if it's a function people have paid for and they have an expectation, or if you're feeding them breakfast after a hard battle PT session or a meal in the field, that food is really important to them, so you have to make sure you're on your best job status every day, every meal. So yeah, it's fun.
LAURA THOMAS: And Brett, you had a bit of a different career path. Tell me about that.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Well, as a reservist, I was with 10/27, in South Australia, and we spent weekends at El Alamein army camp filling sandbags so the tankies could come down and smash them the bits. But it didn't matter. It was $1 for a bottle of beer. And we got fed ration packs, which I just I loved. And then I went to Kapooka in Wagga, Wagga, and I wasn't shy, I'll say that. We had a hallway one morning, and they yell out 'Hallway two'. So, everyone came to the hallway, and we had an inspection. And the sergeant, he said to the corporal, 'Why is recruit Williams' uniform ironed better than yours?'. And he said, 'Because I haven't got him to start ironing my uniform yet', and I did, and for that, our room got cans of cake. But then also we had weeks where you do a week of duties, and I, they threw me into the kitchen, and there was a sergeant cook, and he was in the pastry room, and he got called out. And then all on the bench was all the pastries still rolled out, ready to make pasties. So, I helped myself, and I made them all up and finished them all off. And he come back. He goes, 'Who did this?' and I went, 'Oh, that was me, sarge, sorry'. He goes, 'what were you before you joined?'. I said 'baker, pastry cook by trade'. So where did I spend the week? In the pastries.
BRETT WILLIAMS: And then, yeah, and then I had a really good instructor at the School of Catering in '83 and again, you were outspoken. You're a good cook or good trades person, learning the way the army wanted you to behave and wanted to cook, which was not that difficult. It's a lot of going all around the place and trying to organise yourself and do things. But they teach you that. Then my first posting, funny enough, was below WRAAC school. Now this is how Ruth and I, paths didn't cross.
RUTH HAYES: Could have crossed.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Ruth was up on the cliff, up high, where she still sits now as a Major and I was the private cook down the bottom, you know. And the WRAAC school ladies used to come running past, and those days, you can whistle at them.
LAURA THOMAS: Oh God
BRETT WILLIAMS: And then we'd get told off by one of the female instructors. You know, we’d get told to go back into the kitchen and do what you do. And then yeah, from there, just different unit after unit after unit trying to learn how to be a good cook in the field. And look at all the other people that are out there and climb through the ranks as well. Because even though you're a cook, you're still a soldier first. You go to a unit, you're doing your basic military skills, your weapon handling, your PT and all that sort of stuff, as well as your catering job. And if you're not a good chef, it's soon found out. I say chef now because my son in law, Shaun Woolard, and his era of the young men and women today are chefs, where my era, we're just a cook.
LAURA THOMAS: So, when did that change?
RUTH HAYES: Predominantly in the mid to late 90s, where the Victorian Apprentice Commission actually endorsed the training that was conducted at the Army School of Catering. So that also saw the introduction, which is now called a competency logbook. So, most apprentices out in Civvy Street will use that as well as in the ADF, and we had a trade progression record book. So, by the time you'd completed your initial training as a cook, then you would be posted to the unit for 12, 18, 24, months. Then you would come back and attend it used to be called your advanced Food Service Course, or today it's your subject four, which is for promotion technical you would complete that, and you would have your full indentured apprenticeship papers. We've continued today, our training at the ADF School of Catering is done in partnership with varieties of different TAFEs as contracts change. I was the inaugural Officer Commanding for the ADF School of Catering in '99 and with that, we've always made sure that Commercial Cookery training comes with the end state, so we're not chasing a qualification, but that's what our cooks in the ADF today receive when they've finished their training. So, it's a real big incentive. There has been a big change since the bush cook or the horrid black and white movies that you see, because prior to the core being formed, it literally was the sick, lame, injured and the incompetent were allocated to just get something together.
BRETT WILLIAMS: And criminals
RUTH HAYES: Yeah, so we have come a long, long way.
LAURA THOMAS: We mentioned where the paths nearly crossed. Where did the paths actually cross? How did you two meet?
BRETT WILLIAMS: Ask her about the blue fur hat.
LAURA THOMAS: Yes, this is something that came up, for all my podcasts, a peek behind the curtain, I chat with our podcast subjects beforehand, and Brett mentioned a fur blue hat, but said he couldn't tell me anything more until we started recording.
RUTH HAYES: Adventurous training, units do that. So, it's a little bit of you get out of your normal routine and you go somewhere and do something that pushes you as an individual, but also teamwork focused. So, the unit that we were at, we were hiking Kosciuszko. So, we weren't in uniform, per se. The focus was more on being part of what you were doing, not worrying about rank and everything else. And this one particular person wearing this really dorky blue felt hat, and I just thought someone who's got the ability to wear something like that has got a lot of sense of humour, I think, and would be fun to be around, because no normal person would have ever worn a hat like that in public, let alone a workplace, and it proved a good assessment.
BRETT WILLIAMS: But what's normal? And in catering to be normal, is to be bordering on the side of a nutter, because you're up early, you're loading trucks with equipment day in, day out. We used to do 12 week field exercises where you got a letter, if you were lucky, and you're loading trucks, feeding people, in the dirt, in the dust, in the ticks, in the flies, and that dirty, you might not shower for a week. You know, most catering people, we would set up our own stuff and shower. So, you had to be a little bit crazy, little bit dynamic. And a kitchen in in the house is your centre. It's no different. In the army, the kitchen is the focal point where people go for meals.
BRETT WILLIAMS: And at one point, we used to have tents where they'd come and collect their meals, and they would go to the dining tent. But they were a 20 by 26 setup, which was just difficult to set up, hot, and it was an extra piece of equipment to load and unpack. So, they did away with dining rooms, and then they would start having hot boxes and TV dinner trays, and they would just take that back to their area, so they'd come in and then go away again. So, they lost that little bit of family unity. So, we always tried to do something funny in the kitchens to do that. And it was a long exercise, so one day we were, you know, hot boxing at four o'clock in the morning and that. And we're feeding eight, 900 people three times a day through hot boxes. So, it's a lot of stuff to set up. And so, I made everyone make a different shape Al-foil hat, put on their heads. And the ration truck came in and that, and the young driver said to the OC who was up the road on the hill, 'They've all got hats on, I'm not going down there'. She said, 'It's all right. They're okay. It's just the cooks.
LAURA THOMAS: I think it's quite interesting there talking about the morale and what you're doing to bring that morale up, but you're also doing that through food. The food itself is a key source of morale. How did that present itself in both of your careers?
RUTH HAYES: For me, as I said, I was not hands on. I never worked in the actual kitchens in the production area, but you always knew that birthdays were really important to people, especially when they were the younger ones. It was an 18th birthday, 21st birthday, first time away from home. So that little simple, really basic cake, whether you're on an exercise or back in the unit, really would mean a lot. And it's just those little things that it's not significant, but for that individual, it is. But I think also, like the short times that people are away, it's something that's familiar, that helps them to remember home or remember that they are important and unique, that they're not just a number, like we all have our PM keys, our regimental number, that somebody outside their family does really care about them. Small gestures, but like, if you smile at someone in the street, a small gesture, but it has that little positive ripple effect.
BRETT WILLIAMS: And as a leader through the ranks, Corporal Sergeant, Warrant Officer, you would look at individuals and see what their cooking skills were, because they were a member of your team, and if they couldn't cook, well that reflected on you. So, you would say, 'Okay, what are you good at? Or what are you good at'. And they would say, 'I'm not very good at Rice, or I'm not very good at this'. So, you would spend the time either me individually or someone else, you know, as a leader in catering, I didn't know everything. I just managed everything. So, then I would find the cooks who were the good chefs, the good cooks, the bad ones, and get them to help. Help each other.
LAURA THOMAS: You both served in East Timor, and I'm keen to hear about that from both sides of you and the different work that you were doing there.
RUTH HAYES: I'll let Brett go first, because he actually was with the first insurgence in September '99, so over to you, Brett.
BRETT WILLIAMS: All the hype was coming up about this was going on in East Timor, and we were sent to Darwin, and then we went on the shark cat. So, there was like 400 blokes on this shark cat going through the ocean. We were told that there's submarines following us for our protection, all that sort of stuff. You're geared up as a soldier, you know, you've got bloody weapons with live rounds, and you've got machine guns and all this stuff. We step off, and we get onto a wharf that's just full of displaced people, and there's women and children and men, and they're all crying and rushing trying to get, so you've got to keep them back. So, we get all the equipment loaded off. And then we went through a period where we do infantry tactics, just patrolling buildings and doing search and clearance. And it was funny, because they said anyone with a knife get a knife off of them. But people in the islands, and particularly the Timorese, they have a knife to chop through the jungle, or chop through, you know, a killer snake, or do something like that, anyway, and so pretty much everyone was carrying a knife. So, we're bringing everyone in that's got a knife. And then the order got changed, no only if they're showing violence and that sort of stuff. But then the locals realized that, 'Oh, if we get taken in, we'll get some food and water'. So, they were then attacking each other in play fights to get taken in. So that was, that was interesting. And then we were on ration packs for 19 days, but in between that, there was a Navy ship that was offshore, and we'd sent chefs or cooks out there and they'd get some apples and bananas and that would supplement, you know, a little bit of fresh food. And then we went to Oecussi in the Enclave, and we set up a kitchen feeding 1200 plus people three times a day, with about 30 cooks and stewards.
LAURA THOMAS: And how were you getting food in in that environment, logistically? How was that working?
BRETT WILLIAMS: Well, they had the logistic hub was in Darwin. So, all the food was procured from throughout Australia into the hub there and was either came across on ship or by aircraft, a C130 Hercules. So, the big shipping containers would land, and then the military transport would bring it around to the different kitchens. And at that stage, I think there was about six or seven kitchens within the East Timor area, and with about 30 to 40 cooks and stewards in each location. And yeah, they would just fork it off onto the ground. You would unpack it, put it away in our store areas and our own fridges that we had there. Yeah, then we'd just do up a menu. You know, there was no, no cookbooks or menus or recipe cards or anything like that. That was just what the knowledge that was in your head. I mean, you’d say to the private, 'Okay, you do the menu today,' so he can learn. And, you know, a Corporal would be watching, and a sergeant be watching him, you know. But then you got people who are coming down sick, dehydrated, you know, home sick, a whole range of different stuff. But you just kept going. You knew the reason for being there was to feed the soldiers that are out there doing the dangerous work. If their morale was good through the food, you get feedback straight away and that, and I'll say, I'll be honest, we always sent out good food. The only one time that I remember, they complained we'd run out of bacon for this platoon of about 30 men, and we gave them fillet steak on their egg, and instead of egg and bacon sandwiches, it was a fillet steak sandwich, and they complained because they missed their bacon.
LAURA THOMAS: It's those home comforts though, isn't it? I think sometimes it's those things that people recognise, but what you're explaining Brett, sounds like an incredibly high-pressure environment, because you've not only got to look after yourself, but you're responsible for the food of so many people. How does that impact you? How do you keep yourself going in that situation?
BRETT WILLIAMS: I would look at other people, and you know, whether they're younger than you or older than you, everyone brings something different to the party. So, look at them and see their strengths and weaknesses. If someone's a bit tired, let them have a sleep. And that, and that really did help. If someone's not drinking, say, 'have you had enough water today?'. We had to take, what were the tablets? We had to take?
RUTH HAYES: The Doxy tablets
BRETT WILLIAMS: Doxycycline for malaria, anti-malaria tablets. And you would have a Doxy parade where everyone lined up in the morning and everyone held their tablet up. 'Okay, put it on your tongue', and then they'd put it on their tongue. Have a drink. Because everyone otherwise, people weren't taking it, not because they didn't want to, but because they were busy or tired. So, the average person lost 15 kilos in the three or four months of being there. We weren't doing any regular PT, we might have a bit of game of volleyball, but we also had, and I think this helped us all, we had local assistance, so you got to learn about their culture and see how they had nothing. That was all taken away from them through the conflict. And you would help them. A bit of fruit, you know, a bit of Alfoil or a bit of plastic to wrap something up. And it was just, was really good. It's life changing. Yeah, when I came back from East Timor, I said to my children, 'Don't ever complain again. McDonald's is only down the road'. You know, these people had nothing on that. We used to get through the padres, all the gifts, toys, books, pens, and we would help give that out to the locals in the area we were at the time. It puts your life into perspective.
LAURA THOMAS: How about you? Ruth, tell me about your experiences in East Timor?
RUTH HAYES: My time in Timor Leste was based in Dili, which is the capital, and by that stage, it was 2003 so things had settled down a little bit, and I was what's known as the S1 which is the personnel officer. So, I worked to the commander of the Australian forces. So, my responsibility was not for the direct feeding. We were doing, maintaining the head count. You could only have so many people in country at any one time. I was responsible for the postal service that we had in country, so mail, meals, morale. So, I guess that was within my gambit and responsibility. We also had the pay clerks, and I also had the amenities facilities. So, the daily feeding, was not my scope of accountability or responsibility, but the sidelines to that. However, we were lucky, because you're in the compound the whole time, and we were being fed by the United Nations. So we were in a hard standing particular facility, so it wasn't anything like what Brett was explaining.
RUTH HAYES: However, on a Sunday we were given a half day, you know, work six and a half days. So Sunday mornings, it was basically it was already set in place when I'd arrived and we maintained the process that we would just have cereal and all the bread, the milk, the eggs, whatever, as the raw product, we would go down to the local orphanage and give that to the nuns for the children. And the children were just so gorgeous and beautiful, and it would break your heart every Sunday, you know, you would provide so little, and they were just so, so appreciative. And we would take the children, sounds like a holiday camp, but down to the beach, so the nuns actually would have a little bit of a break. So, these were children who had lost their family. Parents had been murdered, or, you know, sadly, some were conceived from being raped and, of course, abandoned. So very, very hard lives. But I used to get my mum, because we would have the care packs to sent over, and the girls used to love the little nail polish or a face washer, so I guess that was the little bit of the unofficial humanitarian responsibility that we did when we were at the headquarters. But yeah, it was important.
RUTH HAYES: The one time that I would go out on you know, inspections where we were, we were starting to run down and cut back the footprint in Timor Leste, so there were very few cooks left, so they were starting to really get run down. And that was also one of my responsibilities, was to kind of like, advocate on behalf of the catering staff, even though it wasn't directly my responsibility, but because of my rank and my position within the headquarters, to highlight, you can't just run the cooks into the ground. They too get tired or get sick, and it has that huge, big knock-on effect. You know, I used to always have a laugh and a joke and say, we're more important, can cause more damage than any infantry company. Food poisoning, very simple. So, you've got to make sure that your cooks are up to the job every day.
LAURA THOMAS: And we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but I'm keen to go into it a bit further, is the importance of food and good food on deployment, because from the other people that I've spoken to, it has a massive role into, one, productivity and people's ability to do jobs, but again, morale and that feeling of home. Did you both experience that while you were deployed?
RUTH HAYES: For me, as I said, where I was eating, it was the United Nations. So, we had a lot of people, all different nationalities, so the dining room that I would go into, it wasn't just for Australians. So it used to be good where we would see something that would be familiar, you know, that little taste of home, that little bit of hope that, 'Oh, it's not so much longer, and we'll be back home eating this with family or whatever', and the care packs that we used to get, it was always a big trade. 'Well, what did you get in yours?', 'I got Tim Tams', which would melt in the humidity of Timor. So, they were basically useless. Vegemite came in a tube all of a sudden, instead of just a jar. So, it was just little things like that for each other.
LAURA THOMAS: What about you, Brett?
BRETT WILLIAMS: Yeah, it's similar. It's the same sort of focus that the food that you're cooking for other people when they come and give you that feedback, it's that sense of joy that you've done something. And through that, a lot of relationships with the catering personnel and the unit personnel developed, and then they would have an interest, so they would want to come in and want to cook. In Timor as it levelled out, and there wasn't so much stress and they patrolled areas, and they were now, they were just, you know, keeping a watch on it. They would send the platoons, or the sections in section of 10 or 12 men, a platoon of 30, they would come in the kitchen and help us. And I don't ever remember any of them going, 'Oh, you cooks are lazy. We're doing harder job'. They would always go, 'Oh, I don't want to be a cook. Oh, this is horrible'. Yeah, no, but a lot of people understood what they were doing there, were happy being chefs and cooks when they were treated properly, but that extra feedback from the outside perimeter of the kitchen was always good, particularly if it comes through your bosses.
RUTH HAYES: Brett, I'll just cut in. You mentioned the perimeter, and I'm just remembering the stories that you would tell both in Timor and Bougainville, where the surplus rations, you know, the boxes of fruit, whatever, you couldn't give away. You know, that's policy, and that's fine, but you don't want to see food wasted either. Everyone has had what they need, but you would gently push the boxes towards the perimeter of the fence line, and the little arms of children, overnight, in the dark, would be able to pinch the fruit or whatever else out of those boxes. So not just the morale officially, your mission is to sustain the people that you were providing for.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Hearts and minds. That's the terminology they used.
LAURA THOMAS: Now, from what our listeners have already heard, it's pretty clear that you've both had incredibly long careers, and I'd love to unpack them all in detail, but I think we'd have a multi part series on our hands if we were to do that. So, I was hoping that you could both share one of your career highlights with me in the world of catering.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Well, when I was in Bougainville, the crew advisor came over there and said, 'We're going to send you to SASR as the caterer on promotion.
LAURA THOMAS: What's that? What's SASR?
BRETT WILLIAMS: Special Air Service Regiment in Western Australia, and that's the pinnacle of catering jobs. You're a WO2 over there, and you're the senior catering person in Western Australia, apart from Navy, just Army. So, you're left to yourself. So, you have to be on board with your job. You have to understand rationing. You have to understand what the Special Air Service Regiment requires, as far as nutrition, feeding and the way that they operate. And then you have to manage your catering staff. And so, for me to be posted there was a highlight for me. But my time there was, there was a function required of us, and was the ICAP presentation, the International Coalition against Terrorism in 2004 and that was for 4000 people. The first thing I asked is, 'How much money can I have?'. So, they gave me $36,000 to do a buffet for 4000 people. I asked the Navy, and they sent me 30 cooks and stewards from Garden Island in West Australia. And we had 100 by 100 tent set up, and we cooked for a week, and we did just a range of all types of foods. We did old school shore fried hams, we did old school margarine models that we were trained for in the School of Catering years before, we just had a whole range of food, the dining area was laid out in a big U shape with lobsters and seafood and breads, and it was just marvellous. And yeah, for me, that was just a highlight to be in charge of all that and all those people.
LAURA THOMAS: And I think it's interesting, because this is a part of military catering, and I'm probably going to reveal my own naivety here, that you don't hear about, or you don't think about as a civilian. Like when I think of military catering, ration packs, cooking in the bush, things like that. But there's this whole other world where you're catering for 4000 very important people. It's incredible.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Yeah, and that's where the School of Catering and Ruth's group would manage the courses to make sure that we were at that level to be able to do that.
LAURA THOMAS: Now Ruth, Brett, very gracefully threw to you there. I'm intrigued to know your career highlight.
RUTH HAYES: I guess the highlight would have been sadly closing down the Army School of Catering at Puckapunyal. So, they were amalgamating and making it tri-service training. You can boil an egg. Doesn't matter what colour uniform you're in, is what we used to be told. So the ADF School of Catering was formed in '99 so I was the Army representative on the tender evaluation team for doing the cost benefit analysis, initially to identify where the best location would be, the likely best TAFEs would be, all that sort of thing to form the new ADF School of Catering. RUTH HAYES: Closed down the Army, and I was the inaugural Officer Commanding for the ADF School of Catering. So, it was all that norming and storming and bringing together the instructors how we used to do things differently. And we are very much back in the early '90s, we're still very stove piped, single service. So, it was a huge kudos that we were one of the very first ADF schools, and everybody worked together so well, just like in a normal kitchen, we're there to get the best output. So, there was a lot of cross pollination, a lot of working with the TAFE. And I think it was just seeing everybody wanting to make it work was probably the biggest highlight. And the fact that I'd been pre-selected, Air Force and Navy said the only Army person will accept as the first OC is Ruth, because we have trust in her. So, I took that on board and wanted to make sure that we were a successful organisation.
LAURA THOMAS: Ruth, you actually received an Order of Australia medal for your work. Tell me about that.
RUTH HAYES: Yeah, I was totally gobsmacked. You actually receive a letter with the Government House seal on the back. I was thinking 'Ooh, this is impressive. What's this all about?'. And I'd opened it, and my hand was literally shaking. So they actually give you a warning, a heads up, and saying you have been nominated, and this is what you'll be receiving, but you're sworn to secrecy at the same time on this signature block, so I had for probably two months could say nothing.
LAURA THOMAS: Wow. Two months?
RUTH HAYES: So that was in the Australia Day honours. So, it was predominantly for two purposes. One was with all my involvement in leading catering training reviews as an employment Category Manager, looking at what we do or don't need in our training, but also going through what's called the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal process. So, the CDF doesn't dictate what people get paid. The Defence Force tribunal does that. So it was my responsibility as the lead project manager, basically initially for catering, when we still had cooks and stewards, and you would have to provide all the evidence, do all the court books, conduct site visits, all that sort of thing to prove the consequence of error, the level of responsibility, accountability, evolution of training, revolution, lots of different metrics that you would have to address. And when I had completed that, then I also did the same within ordinance, their clerks and the acute personnel for the medics supported that as well, also for the pay clerks and for the RAEME trades. So, they've got what they call the green which are the electricians, the black trades, which is the dirtier ones, more like the mechanics and the recovery. So, there are, when you think about it, there are a couple of thousand people that ended up benefiting over a couple of years of the work that I was dealing with when we actually were very successful in getting our pay group increases. So not your CPI pay increase that everybody gets. It's okay, you're a cook or you're a motor mechanic, you'll get paid group three or pay group four, and you can justify it that way. So, I think it was pretty, pretty humbling when I saw the nomination, and I was very lucky because it was at Government House here in Victoria that I was actually presented. So yeah, pretty special memories.
LAURA THOMAS: Now, as I mentioned before, me, personally, I have a lot of misconceptions about the military catering space, and I'm learning more about through the exhibition and through talking to people like you, but I'm curious about what you think the biggest misconceptions that the general public have about your work in this military catering world.
BRETT WILLIAMS: I think it starts with the army in general. They think that 'I don't want to join the army because I don't like being told what to do', but you're given free reign if you have a sense of achievement. And that goes into catering. We get people into the catering Corp, and they go on and they do stuff. So, I think the misconception from their families is 'What do you actually do?'. Because a lot of people won't talk about it. And I used to call the wives in and have morning tea with them and say, 'What do you think your husband does?', 'I don't know. He doesn't talk much about it'. So, I would take them to the kitchen and show them. And then the wider civilian population would see a display and they all like to come and see the guns. And they all like to come and climb over a tank and do stuff. But if you put a cooking pot there they go 'Oh'. But if you show a cook, and now a chef, doing the fine dining, doing the field catering, doing the really difficult roles in those environments, they just go, 'Oh, we never knew that', because it's not widely known or talked about. People who've spent years in catering, they go off into the wilderness because they've had so much, I suppose, workload, or, you know, people around them, they just want to have a bit of a quiet life, you know. So, you tend not to spread what I'm doing, but people still ask me, and I still advocate for defence force and tell them, 'This is what we're doing, this is what we've been doing.' 'Oh, really?'. And I think that's the biggest misconception, is that there's just no understanding of what is done.
LAURA THOMAS: What about you, Ruth?
RUTH HAYES: I'm thinking more the misconception is what we see in the movies a lot and Australia, the tall poppy, we always like to be able to put someone else down. So almost the cook or the steward is the weak target type thing. But that's very wrong. Very, very wrong. The catering that is provided in the ADF is second to none. Sadly, we have lost most of our messes, so people can't actually provide that daily in a barracks environment. Catering. I'm talking army now. So, the misconception, I think, is people pigeonhole, that you're a bit still, potentially a bulk, sloppy cook, wet dishes type thing, which is anything but that. As I mentioned before, the professional training that's provided for everybody, but you're still a soldier first, and that is what's the critical thing. You are still a capability or a multiplier for the Chief of Army and for the CDF, you have a crucial role to play. You will find that many of the cooks might be able to run the fastest, at the weapons, at wets, they've got the best zeroing. They have got all the military skills, so you're the whole package. And we really have set people up perfectly for going sideways in employment, and that's where many of the cooks will end up on the oil rigs or in the mines and earning a lot of money because they can operate independently. They are taught to think. They are taught to be flexible. They are taught to problem solve on the spot. They don't need to be told everything that they have to do every five minutes of their shift. So, I think people don't, they underestimate just how important the cook is. And as I said, you know, Napoleon (said), many, many years ago, 'An army marches on its stomach'. So, it doesn't matter how gucci the latest piece of equipment is. If a person isn't being fed well, they're not nourished, the morale is not there, you have a workforce, but nobody's capable of using any of that gucci stuff. So, we're the unsung heroes.
LAURA THOMAS: I can't wrap up, as much as that's a perfect way to end, without asking you about the combat ration pack, because I've heard mixed reviews, and I want to know, I think you can both be honest with me at this point, what's the best and the worst items in them?
BRETT WILLIAMS: Ration packs. So, there's a range of ration packs. There's the old 10-man ration pack that they used to supply to groups of people that could open it themselves and put it in pots and cook it and that. And the best thing in that was ham. It was, I'll say it's like spam, but it's just the ham. And then you had tinned peas, tinned carrots, and you had a nice, boiled fruit cake. But then the other ration packs, the ones that you regularly get is the combat ration one man, and that's three meals for a 24-hour period. So, if you're going away for four days, and these weigh about a kilo plus each, so that's added weight that you've got, as far as your clothing, water and all the other stuff that you carry. But the best thing for me in a combat ration one man was the cheese and the Vegemite on a really hard cracker biscuit. And it was just, it was just nice. The worst thing wasn't any one item. It was when the jar of Vegemite or the jam burst and it went through your pack, and, yeah, it just wasn't good. And I ate everything cold. So, some people would spend the time and heat up their little tins of bully beef and stuff like that. And I think there was a lamb and rosemary dish. And every now and then you'd get a little bit of heart valve in it where it wasn't cut up properly. So just things like that, and you ate it anyway, because you didn't know when you were going to get your next, your next feed.
LAURA THOMAS: Ruth, did you have any experience with ration packs, good or bad?
RUTH HAYES: I'll be totally honest, the number of times I consumed ration packs, probably, you know, on two hands. But the old hard chocolate in the day used to be still pretty popular, because you could just break that up and slowly suck on it. But the ration pack has progressed so much in the last 30 years, and I think that is one of the misconceptions that I think the display here at the Shrine is highlighting as well. You know, it used to be that horrendous spam and that the hard biscuit that you'd have to soak for an hour before you could eat it. But today, it's very much, not just on the nutrition, but it's the energy levels and the customer satisfaction, the diner satisfaction. Because what used to happen, like you said, Brett, it was quite heavy. So if you know you've got to have all that extra water, if you've got dehydrated food, I don't want the dehi, because that's another litre of water I don't have to carry, or I need more ammunition, I'm not going to eat these other bits out of my ration packs. So, they've been very cognisant of that, and really looking very closely at what is light, you know, like the retort pouches, eat on the move, all those sort of things. So, the ration pack has progressed hugely, hugely in the last 40 years. So today, I guess the old M&Ms, but in the old days, it was a block of almost white chocolate.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Cadbury
RUTH HAYES: So, it wouldn't melt. You can be in the tropics, and it would not melt.
LAURA THOMAS: Well, Brett and Ruth, it's been absolutely wonderful to speak to you both and hear about your careers and your experience and your wisdom that you've shared about the catering world. Thank you so much for chatting with me today.
RUTH HAYES: Laura, it's been a delight. Thank you for inviting us.
BRETT WILLIAMS: Thank you very much, Laura,
LAURA THOMAS: Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. Taste of Combat: the Evolution of Military Food is on display at the Shrine until November 2025. You can visit for free every day, from 10am to 5pm. To learn more, head to shrine.org.au.
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