The Hirshon South Dakota Pheasant Sandwich

Citizens, we have just finished up Memorial Day here in the United States and it occurred to me – the always scholarly TFD – to combine my twin passions for history and gastronomy to give you a double shot of goodness related to this solemn remembrance day.

As noted on the excellent South Dakota State Historical Society Website:

Americans did not know it then, but 1943 would mark the turning of Allied fortunes in World War II. In that year, British and American forces defeated the Germans in North Africa, invaded Italy, and opened the offensive against the Japanese in the Pacific. Here at home, civilians endured austerity measures like the rationing of meat, butter, sugar, coffee, canned goods, and gasoline in order to free up resources for the war effort.

Through tin-can, wastepaper, and scrap-metal collections, clothing drives, and war-bond rallies, they not only contributed matériel to the war effort but boosted morale on the home front, too.

Among the most successful of these cooperative efforts was the canteen, which offered free, wholesome entertainment for service people away from home. The canteen in Aberdeen, South Dakota, which opened in 1943 and specialized in free pheasant sandwiches, put the town “on the map” in the hearts and minds of thousands of service men and women traveling across the continent on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad.

A joint effort of the United Sen/ices Organization (USO), the Red Cross, the Milwaukee Road, and local organizations from throughout the area, the Aberdeen canteen served several hundred thousand people before it closed in 1946. Open seven days a week, including holidays, the operation was staffed entirely by volunteers whose days began at eight o’clock in the morning and lasted until midnight or later.

Early in 1943, Aberdeen’s mayor, O. M. Tiffany, called a meeting of civic leaders and the heads of local organizations to discuss what the Aberdeen community could do on the home front to help the war effort. Someone suggested starting a canteen, of which there were several in the United States. The idea met with a great deal of enthusiasm.

The first question was where to have it. The obvious place was the lobby of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul depot, because the troop trains would be running on the Milwaukee rail lines. A committee contacted Milwaukee officials, who not only consented to let us use a small four-by-thirty-foot area along the north wall of the lobby but also installed hot and cold running water. Someone else contributed two long, tall counters.

I have since looked at that small space and wondered how fifteen people could crowd into it and work, but we were young and slender, and so we managed.

About one hundred fifty feet from the depot was the Milwaukee freight office building, whose second floor housed large rooms where the Milwaukee Road Women’s Club met. Here there were long tables and a kitchen with a sink and refrigerator. We could use this space for food preparation.

Agreeing to sponsor the canteen were the Brown County Red Cross with Harvey Jewett as chairman, the Brown County USO with Frank Cuhin as chairman, the Women’s Auxiliary of the American Legion, and the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. The Red Cross and USO together contributed one thousand dollars to get the canteen started. After the first month, the operation became self-sustaining.

The canteen’s publicity committee called for volunteers, of which about three hundred were needed each month. When all was ready, the canteen opened on 19 August 1943. By the end of that year, one hundred fifty thousand people had been fed at a cost of approximately five hundred sixty dollars per month.

The canteen had a good-sized grocery order every day. It included sixty quarts of milk, three quarts of cream, eight pounds of coffee, many pounds of minced ham, fifteen dozen eggs, fifty to seventyfive loaves of bread, one gallon of salad dressing, butter {which was severely rationed), and waxed paper for wrapping sandwiches. The Coca-Cola Company and other bottling companies donated soft drinks. The local laundry washed dishtowels. Various quantities of cookies, doughnuts, and fruit were donated.

Just before Christmas in 1943, some farmers delivered a number of pheasants, which the supervisor cooked, ground, and made into sandwiches. The pheasant sandwiches became so popular that people pooled their gasoline coupons and shotgun shells and organized drives to hunt the birds. All together, hunters donated several thousand pheasants.

Because there were no home freezers and one small refrigerator could not accommodate the birds, the K. D. Locker Company processed, froze, and stored them for twenty cents apiece. Every day a supervisor would get ten or twelve, take them home, and prepare them for the next day.

These pheasant sandwiches, served up with hospitality, made the Aberdeen canteen famous.’ Between 1914 and 1917, the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks stocked the state with seven thousand exotic Chinese ring-necked pheasants, which quickly became the mainstay of its sport-hunting industry. At their peak in the mid-1940s, the birds’ numbers are estimated to have reached between thirty and fifty million. In 1943, the same year the state legislature declared the pheasant South Dakota’s state bird, hunters harvested over three million roosters. 

With just fifteen minutes of warning before any train came, we were all at our posts. One volunteer did nothing but fill sandwich trays. Another filled glasses with milk, and someone else poured coffee. Because there were no paper or styrofoam cups, one girl washed glasses and cups as fast as they were emptied, while another rinsed and dried them.

We always sent two girls out to meet the train and escort the boys in. One girl was a cute little redhead, and the other a blonde. Within a minute they would come prancing back with a fellow on each arm and the whole trainload of boys following. The boys had only a twelve- to fifteen-minute stop, so they ate and talked fast. They could not understand how we could giveaway all that food and accept no pay for it. Evidently, most of them came from areas where people are not as open-handed as they are in South Dakota.

We told our guests that the home folks were simply trying to help. We always had a birthday cake prepared, complete with candles, and some happy fellow would hike back to the train carrying the cake with the candles lighted. At Easter time, we provided colored eggs. In addition to the food counter at the canteen, there was an information booth where the boys could pick up books, stationery, playing cards, games, puzzles, and magazines, all manner of items that people brought in.

At Christmas, there was a lighted Christmas tree with a small gift for each soldier. As soon as the train left, we hurried to fill more trays, in the few minutes after the warning for the next train, we filled cups and glasses. There were usually from four to six trains a day, some of them arriving welt into the night.

The canteen closed in March 1946, after operating for two and one half years at a cost of slightly over thirty thousand dollars. The Aberdeen canteen was a morale-builder for service personnel and volunteers alike. Volunteers fed between seventeen thousand and twenty thousand boys each month. The Aberdeen canteen was a great morale builder for the troops who came through because it showed service men and women that people cared and were concerned.

It was also a great morale builder for the home folks, who felt they were doing what they could for the war effort. Canteen workers were on duty for long periods and were physically exhausted after twelve to eighteen hours of work, but it was a good tiredness, for they believed they were doing something highly worthwhile. 

Citizens, the pheasant sandwich showcased all that was good and true in America at that time – and I hope by posting this my fellow countrymen remember our servicemen and women and the ultimate price many of them paid for defending freedom.

I have taken the liberty of updating the simple recipe for pheasant sandwiches (noting my changes and keeping the original ingredients) and adding a few modern touches and gilding the lily a bit in adding some fancy ingredients. It remains true to the original and I hope you enjoy it, my Citizens! 🙂

Battle on – The Generalissimo

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