Every May Americans take a day to commemorate those who have fallen in battle and given their lives for the freedoms that Americans enjoy today. The holiday is traditionally a chance for families or friends to get together for a meal and a few drinks and to raise a glass to the brave service men and women who have given so much for freedom. For something different here is a Memorial Day party idea to make sure that yours is a memorable one.

Too often people nowadays do not appreciate how hard the life of the soldier is. Life for Americans has become for the most part comfortable and safe, Memorial Day has become almost a parody of this with those at home enjoying seemingly endless food while the troops are risking their lives in often appalling conditions bringing freedom to deserts around the world.

To help your nearest and dearest appreciate this, instead of cooking a sumptuous meal and filling the larder with delicious drinks, why not cook a soldiers desert rations as the main meal to bring home the harsh realities of life as lived by the thousands of brave men and women fighting for freedom. Recreate the harsh conditions to better appreciate the day to day life of a soldier and be thankful it is not us.

If serving functional and tasteless dehydrated food is not sufficient to get the message home, you could add to the atmosphere further by playing the sounds of battle during the meal to keep guests on edge. Speaking in conversations punctuated by intermittent shelling and gunfire is a great way to pay tribute to the sacrifices of the proud few. War is hell and hopefully by realizing this we can help to avoid the children of today ever having to see the horrors that our predecessors did.

To make it even more realistic a further step could be to replace your typical dining room table with a basic military one. If you have access to sand then putting the table in the sand to recreate the conditions of desert warfare where so many of the nations soldiers are fighting right now.

So if you are stuck for a Memorial Day party idea, inviting your friends to come and eat military rations in a simulated desert environment with the sound of warfare in the background and drones flying overhead would be a fitting tribute to the unimaginable strength and selflessness that characterizes the American military past and present.