The year is September 1, 1939, Germany invades Poland causing the allies of France and Britain to declared war on Germany, beginning World War II. Shortly after on September 17, the Soviet Union troops invaded Poland from the east. Not long after, the United States officially enters the war on December 11, 1941. Mobilization began when the United States declares war on Japan on December 8, 1941, one day after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Our military troops were set into action by land, air, and sea with boots on the ground in multiple locations and military bases all over the world.
With our troops overseas, our country back on the Homefront is mobilized in full-throttle producing planes, tanks, vehicles, and various other items in support of the war efforts. Some of that support came from breweries across the country packing and shipping beer to the troops. However, the beer that was shipped was unlike the beer that you could buy at your local tavern or beer distributor.
Beer Cans Made for the Troops
The difference was the packaging of this beer was known as “Olive Drab Beer Cans” made specifically for the military. These Olive Drab Beer cans came in flat top beer cans, cone top beer cans, and crowntainer beer cans. They were printed with similar graphics to the cans on the Homefront except they were printed in a non-metallic dark military “olive drab” green and black coloring. They were produced this way so that when the troops were drinking them in strategic areas, that they would provide a sort of camouflage for the troops while they were enjoying a taste of home.
Various breweries across the country secured military contracts with the Government to produced and ship their beer in olive drab cans to the troops. Some of these breweries included Anheuser-Busch, Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, Blatz, Ballentine, Genesee, Fall City, Lucky Lager, Rainier, Regal, Pfeiffer, Rheingold, Peter Hand, Krueger, Hamms, Grand Prize, Acme, Berghoff, Fitzgerald, Carling, Sicks, Schaefer, Iroquois, Beverwyck, Utica Club, Schmidt, Adam Scheidt, Duquesne, Fort Pitt, Stegmaier, Furmann & Schmidt, and Esslinger just to name a few.
The beer cans themselves were produced by the Continental Can Company located in Stanford, CT, and the American Can Company with manufacturing and canning facilities in Manhattan, NY, and Chicago, IL. American Can Co used their “keglined” brand technology to help keep the beer as fresh as possible from the moment it is filled to the moment it was opened. Even the bottle cap crowns were printed in green olive drab and black ink to be used on the cone top cans. Olive drab flat tops were the preferred can of choice to ship, but some breweries would ship olive drab cone tops as they could be run through pre-existing bottling lines and capped with minimal modification to the brewery’s existing bottling line without investing a large amount of money in flat top canning equipment.
Talk about a beer run…
The cans would arrive with other supplies by the skid full by truck, train, and sometimes airdrop to remote locations. From time-to-time full wooden kegs of beer would be flown in attached to the bottoms of fighter and bomber planes. The OD cans were usually dispersed according to each military company’s geographic location for example: if an army unit was from Milwaukee, WI then cases of Miller High Life would have been dispensed to that company to give the boys a taste of home.
Today, these military beer cans are often found in other countries across Europe where our troops would have occupied. They can usually be found in barns, sheds, privies, attics, basements, military barracks, abandon buildings, crawlspaces, behind walls, and buried in trash dump sites. They can also be found domestically in parts of Alaska and Hawaii as well as part of military keepsakes and war prizes that our soldiers would have brought home with them.
Below are some olive drab cans and old photographs of our troops:
