MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- Chow, grub, nourishment. Food goes by many names, but no matter the title, the importance remains the same. While vital to human life, it’s easy for people to overlook the necessity of food, and those who cook it.
Marine Wing Support Squadron 171 recently returned from a two-month Integrated Training Exercise in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and while training focused on maintaining airfield operations, it would be remiss to not mention those cooking for every participating Marine. Of those cooks, Lance Cpl. Clemente Jimenez, a field mess cook with MWSS-171, shined above the rest.
“He shows a lot of leadership traits,” said Cpl. Alan Peterson, a field mess noncommissioned officer with MWSS-171. “We made him the chief cook and that’s normally a job one of the corporals or sergeants do, but we gave him that position and he did an amazing job. For a junior Marine at that level who has never been at field mess.”
Master Sgt. Raul Zepeda, field mess chief with MWSS-171, also noted Jimenez’s impressive work.
“We gave Jimenez the freedom to do what he wanted, he has a great imagination so we let him run with it,” said Zepeda. “Every day, he came up with something new … with the very limited resources we had out in the field. We did put him up for a reward and I hope he gets it.”
According to several participants of the ITX, Jimenez’s cooking drew more hungry patrons to the expeditionary field kitchen than anticipated.
“People asked who was making the cakes and who was baking, and it was Jimenez the entire time, I couldn’t be more proud of what he did out there,” said Zepeda. “Our numbers were roughly around 300, but as the exercise went on and word got out, we started feeding personnel from Camp Wilson on the flightline and our numbers almost doubled.”
Jimenez mentioned that Staff Sgt. Ronald Vargas, field mess staff noncommissioned officer with MWSS-171, was his inspiration during ITX.
“‘Treat every meal like it’s their last meal,’ was what he was telling us all the time,” said Jimenez. He was our role model out there, he put us through trials and tribulations to push us to the limit and see what we could accomplish. He told us about this story of when he went to Afghanistan. There was this unit going on a patrol and they were all sad and depressed. He was a sergeant at the time and his gunny told him, ‘hey, treat every meal like their last,’ but he didn’t care at the time. He just wanted to go back home and see his family. So these Marines who ate in chow hall weren’t happy at all about the food, but he didn’t care. A while later, his gunny came back and told him, ‘hey, remember those Marines you served food to who were unhappy about it when they left? That was their last meal.’ From that day on, he realized that you need to treat every meal like it could be someone’s last. That’s what he taught us and that’s why we tried so hard to make sure that every person who walked in to our chow hall walked out happy.”