THE LIFE OF AN ENLISTED AIDE Master Sgt. David A. Marcelli, CCE, CEC, PCC, AAC, has been cooking since he was 14 and worked as a country club chef in his early 20s before joining the U.S. Army more than two decades ago and working up the ranks as an enlisted aide like Chef Winks. “Stressful, demanding, challenging, satisfying, rewarding.” Those are the words Chef Marcelli uses to describe what it’s like to be a military chef. He’s been on four deployments (three to Iraq and one in Afghanistan) and has had to manage high-volume kitchens both on a base and in the field. “Most of our military kitchens are set up to
“Food is morale in military,” he says. “I’ve been in hostile areas where there are just 12 guys on a team and me, the cook, and a supply person and maybe a couple other support people, but that’s it. When you’ve been out crawling in the mud or trudging through the woods or dodging landmines or completing extreme cold weather missions, you see how much great food can change the whole atmosphere. When you go out of your way to cook a vegetarian meal for someone you know doesn’t eat meat or make someone’s omelet just like they like it in the morning and always have hot coffee running 24 hours a day, you know you’re doing your part as a chef in the armed forces.” Chef Winks first got wind of the culinary world after going through initial occupational training at Fort Gregg-Adams (then Fort Lee). “I was a young private who got put on detail washing dishes for the Culinary Olympic team,” he says. “I was immediately hooked and wanted to be a part of that.” Considering himself “lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” Chef Winks was stationed at Fort Carson in 1995 and observed airborne military cooks for the Green Berets. “I went to their compound and asked how to be a cook,” he says. “The dining facility manager for the special forces said if I can decorate a cake for the grand opening of their compound I could gain acceptance into the unit. I went back to the artillery unit where I was stationed and asked the head chef to teach me how to do that. I managed to pull off the assignment and ended up in special forces for the next 14 years.” During his career, Chef Winks also had the opportunity to go to the Culinary Institute of America as a military liaison for a year and earn ProChef Level II certification. In the 2010s, Chef Winks was as a member of the esteemed USACAT team and competed internationally at the Culinary Olympics in Germany and Expogast in Luxemburg, later becoming an advisor for the team. He was a coach for the team this year, and for the last 12 years, he has served as master of ceremony for the Joint Training Culinary Exercise at Fort Gregg-Adams. “Winning gold medals is great, but what it all boils down to is better food for service members,” says Chef Winks. “We take kids from all branches of the military and train them to do advanced level cooking and represent the U.S. They get to go back to their bases and train others.”
feed hundreds to thousands of service members; whereas a small restaurant kitchen may have one large steam jacket kettle to cook maybe 10 gallons of soup,
a lot of our kitchens are set up with 100- to 200-gallon pots, several tilt skillets, and several industrial ovens all blazing away for most of the day to keep up with the demands,” he says. As an enlisted aide stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii, “We entertain foreign dignitaries, senators and foreign senior military liaisons from all over the world,” Chef Marcelli says. “One of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do most recently was work with the Japanese consulate here to build foreign relations — their military team recently came here to help us with one of our functions.” Outside of his regular duties Chef Marcelli has taught culinary arts classes at Fort Gregg-Adams and participated in several culinary competitions while serving in the military. “I was a support member of the 2012 United States Army Culinary Arts Team (USACAT), which competed in the 2012 Olympics in Erfurt, Germany, and I have competed personally in the Fort Gregg-Adams Joint Culinary Training Exercise, winning ACF gold in nutrition and several other individual and team medals.
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