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- Herausgeber: The History Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
"I found to my delight that I had stumbled across a kind of soup kitchen. The Tommy in charge was stirring a copperful of 'Shackles' (soup made from the very dregs of army cooking and stirred with a stick). I must have looked in need of extra nourishment for he said 'D'yer want a drop, son?' 'Yes please' I replied if you can spare it.' The warmth and zest from that beefy liquid, unexpected as it was, compelled me to accept a second bowlful which I drank with the same enthusiasm as the first." - George Coppard, from With A Machine Gun to Cambrai. From bully beef to Tickler's jam, explore what kept Tommy Atkins fed in the trenches by reading recipes and learning how meals were made just yards from the enemy. In this book Andrew Robertshaw combines history, recipes and historical experiments to reveal how Army Cooks in the First World War fed millions of men everyday against the odds.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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This book is dedicated to the memory of army cooks such as Private G/12022 Abel Flitney, who died of wounds in the Battle of Passchendaele on 2 August 1917, and to all cooks who served and made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Part One
Profile of an Army Cook
The Army Ration
From the Mess Tin to the Mess Hall
Conclusion
Part Two
A Collection of Tommy’s Battlefield Recipes
Select Bibliography
Glossary of culinary terms
Notes
Plate Section (Colour)
Plate Section (Mono)
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOR MANY PEOPLE rations in the Great War have been summed up by a conversation in the famous television series Blackadder Goes Forth, which ran from 1983 to 1989. When Captain Edmund Blackadder, who is serving in the trenches of the First World War, asks what there is to eat, his soldier servant, Private Baldrick, replies:
Private Baldrick: ‘Rat au Van, Sir.’
Captain Blackadder: ‘Rat au Van, Baldrick?’
Private Baldrick: ‘Yes Sir, it’s rat that’s been…’
Captain Blackadder: ‘Run over by a van.’1
Without wishing to dismiss in any way the humour of the piece, the fact that the Blackadder Goes Forth series is now included as a source in the curriculum about the First World War indicates that this exchange represents a common view of trench rations. A quick survey of resources for schools on the Internet produced the following (the emphasis is my own):
By the time the food reached the frontline it was always cold.
Eventually the army moved the field kitchens closer to the frontline but they were never able to get close enough to provide regular hot food for the men.
Men claimed that although the officers were well-fed the men in the trenches were treated appallingly.
I am grateful for the opportunity to present the reality based on the archives of The Royal Logistic Corps Museum and a range of contemporary accounts by the men who cooked the rations and ate them between 1914 and 1918. This book is interspersed with hints and tips that they learnt during service and their recipes, kindly reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of The Royal Logistic Corps Museum.
I would like to express my thanks to the many army ‘chefs’, as they are now called, who have supported The Royal Logistic Corps Museum and myself with this project.
PREFACE
WHETHER IT IS a memorable meal when out of the trenches or the failure of the rations to arrive on a cold wet morning in the frontline, descriptions of life on the Western Front are littered with references to food. To those who read the accounts, soldiers appear obsessed by food. Whether soldiers are in the frontline as infantrymen, serving the guns, driving vehicles or caring for animals, they need to eat. Even if the men who had been civilians before the war and now found themselves in ‘the ranks’ had not always eaten adequate meals in civil life, they expected to be paid for their military service and to receive ‘three square meals’ a day. Many of the recruits of 1914 enlisted to get new clothes on their backs, rations to eat, regular pay and to ‘do their bit’. For many in a world before the welfare state, and at the time of an economic recession, the imperative of food and the promise of meals, not love of King and Country, brought them to the recruiting office. It was noticed by many instructors and officers that recruits rapidly filled out. Younger ones even put on stature as a response to the rations they received, combined with exercise and unaccustomed physical activity.
Soldiers are often young men, who are both growing and involved in strenuous activity. In consequence, they are frequently constantly hungry and sometimes looking for comfort in what can be a bleak environment with little other opportunity for enjoyment. A soldier serving as a transport driver with the London Rifle Brigade states in his memoir:
It was a curious thing that when food was in abundance, as on lines of communication, we did not possess enormous appetites; but when we had … half-slices of bread, estimating we couldn’t eat more now because we should have to want a little for the next meal … we seemed suddenly to have a craving for twice as much as we normally ate.2
If older soldiers were not so hungry, they appear to search for food that is familiar and reminds them of home; this, potentially, provides a break from the tedium of military rations, in which the diner has no choice of menu. Whether it was the pure satisfaction of eating or the search for variety that compelled soldiers, they all knew that meals were critical. This was recognised by the army and throughout the war the military authorities did all that could be done to ensure adequate and well-cooked rations were available. Hungry men make bad soldiers, hence the axiom attributed to Napoleon: ‘An Army marches on its stomach’.
Although the Great War of popular imagination has soldiers constantly underfed and virtually begging for food, the reality is rather different. In the autumn of 1914, Private Frank Richards records:
There was no such things as cooked food or hot tea at this stage of the war, and the rations were very scarce, we were lucky if we got our four biscuits a man daily, a pound tin of ‘bully’ between two, a tin of jam between six and the rum ration which was about a tablespoon and a half.3
This describes the early phase of trench warfare before the supply chain to the United Kingdom and Empire was fully established and before local purchase became common. Despite these advances, there could be local problems during periods of shelling, combat or movement of units. Private Beatson recalled an occasion in the trenches when there was no food at all: ‘The following day we had no rations sent us, our “emergencies” were done, and the men went hungry’.4 In extreme circumstances, as George Coppard makes clear, casualties could provide a bonus for men in an emergency: ‘Gruesome and distasteful as it was, we augmented our supplies from the dead … a tin of bully in a dead man’s pack can’t help him, nor can a pack of cigarettes. Many a good smoke came our way in this manner.’5 A soldier of the London Rifle Brigade describes a situation in 1915, in which ‘No rations arrive, I opened my haversack and pulled out a tin of bully beef, two biscuits and some tea leaves, on which I proceeded to make a breakfast’.6 He also notes the effect that even a hot drink could have, however it was prepared: ‘For tea, Bourke and Whittle heated a mug full of cocoa over two candles and shared the drink with Thomson and me. Three sips of this worked wonders’.7 Sometimes the shortage of food was the result of official policy and right at the end of the war, on 11 November 1918, an unknown non-commissioned officer (NCO) of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), who was supervising a hospital ward, announced that, ‘To celebrate the conclusion of hostilities every patient will be allowed an extra piece of bread and jam with his tea’.8
George Coppard provides a balance of attitude towards the matter of rations. Out of the frontline his view was that, ‘The cooking arrangements were good too. “Burgoo” (porridge) before the breakfast fry-up, and “spotted dog” (currant pudding) with dinner, were welcome fillers’.9 However, conditions in the frontline were a contrast:
Sharing out the rations for a small unit was a bit of a lottery, especially where tins of jam, bully beef, pork and beans, butter and so on were concerned. The share-out was seldom favourable to a six-man team. So far as I know there were no hard and fast rules regarding the quantity of each type of ration a man was entitled to. The Army Service Corps [ASC] were the main distributors, but how much food actually arrived in the trenches depended on such things as transport, the weather and enemy action. Irregular appropriations were likely to be made en route.10
Even when the rations arrived, they could present problems of sharing them out in a fair manner:
Presently our acting QMS [Quartermaster Sergeant] arrived with a sack, which was hauled up into the loft with some difficulty, and proceeded to issue out the rations according to ‘messes’. The average number in a ‘mess’ was four, but some parties drew for two, some for three, others for five; here and there one single man clamoured for his proportion and, in desperation, Hurford brigadied two or three irreconcilables together and treated them as a mess, regardless of their feelings. The difficulty of splitting up cheese, tins of margarine, jam etc., among such varying quantities can be imagined.11
He contrasts this somewhat mixed experience with an account of a chance encounter with an army cook. When making his way down a communication trench to join his unit, the young soldier had a very pleasant surprise:
I found to my delight that I had stumbled across a kind of soup kitchen. The Tommy in charge was stirring a copperful of ‘Shackles’ (soup made from the very dregs of army cooking and stirred with a stick). I must have looked in need of extra nourishment for he said ‘D’yer want a drop, son?’ ‘Yes please,’ I replied, ‘if you can spare it.’ The warmth and zest from that beefy liquid, unexpected as it was, compelled me to accept a second bowlful which I drank with the same enthusiasm as the first.12
If food in the frontline could vary, rations for men who were out of the line could be surprisingly generous. Private John Jackson recalled that, at Essars in Flanders, the day’s menu consisted of:
Breakfast: chipped potatoes, steak and bacon, fried onions, coffee, bread and butter.
Dinner: roast chicken, boiled potatoes and carrots, rice pudding, coffee and biscuits, wine, cognac, and beer.
Tea: Bacon and eggs, tea, cake and biscuits.
Supper: Coffee, cake, bottled raspberries and cream, followed by a good glass of ‘rum punch’ as a night-cap.13
One surprising element of the experience of being out of the line is illuminated by Private Dolden: ‘This was followed by a good feed with knife and fork, implements almost forgotten…’14 When at the front, a knife and fork was largely dispensed with and replaced by use of a jack knife and spoon. The former item was fastened to the user by a lanyard around the waist or clipped to a belt so it could not be easily lost, and the spoon could be slipped into a pocket or tucked into the top of a man’s puttees so it could be located in a hurry. Even today, a so-called ‘racing spoon’ forms a vital item of kit for soldiers in the modern British Army.
From Log Book of Pte A. Flitney.
More importantly, time out of the trenches, battery position or day-to-day routine, meant the opportunity to supplement issue rations with food and drink bought locally. This could be either from organisations such as the YMCA, Red Cross or Expeditionary Force Canteen (EFC), or from local civilians. The estaminet, the unique cross between bar and café, which sprung up wherever the enterprising French or Belgian could find a surviving building and customers, became a feature of virtually every soldier’s experience of the Western Front. The term ‘plonk’ for cheap wine dates from a period when British soldiers, who preferred white to red wine, ordered glasses of ‘vin blanc’. Egg and chips were also an ideal alternative to bully beef and plum and apple jam. Private Beatson comments that, after an exhausting time in the trenches, a meal purchased in a café behind the lines was more than a tonic: ‘A good feed and a wash set me on my legs again. The feed nothing elaborate, in a house-café, cost for two; 3Fr [Francs] 20c [Centimes].’15 On another occasion, he wrote: ‘We rose this morning about 8 o’clock after a comfortable night on the straw Watson and I went out to a café and had a tuck in to coffee and buttered rolls’.16
At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, the Regular Army’s ration strength was 125,000. On mobilisation they were joined by reservists, who expanded this force to over 300,000 men in the course of a few weeks. By November this initial force had been joined by a further 300,000 Territorials. At the same time hundreds of thousands of men rushed to volunteer, virtually swamping the pre-war system of organisation with men who had to be fed, housed and equipped.17 By the end of the Great War more than 5¼ million men and women were in British uniform and more than 2 million of these were on the Western Front.18
One of the oft-quoted facts about the war is that more forage for horses was shipped to the Western Front than ammunition. Some historians have chosen to interpret this as being evidence of cavalry-obsessed British generals. A look at the statistics, however, demonstrates that at its greatest strength, in September 1916, the cavalry represented 2.5 per cent of the manpower of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). This had dropped to 1.3 per cent in June 1918.19 So why were so many horses being fed? The answer is the subject of this book. The figures are:
Dead-weight tonnage shipped to France from 9 August 1914 to 10 November 1918
Ammunition
5,253,338
Food, General
3,240,948
Oats and Hay
5,438,602
Expeditionary Force Canteen
269,517
20
Even after the expansion of mechanised vehicles, the BEF remained, essentially, a horse-drawn army. Horses were used to move guns, ammunition, pontoons, supplies and both rations and fodder. Even the most ill-used infantryman could not fight a battle every day and even the artillery were not in constant action. However, from August 1914 to 11 November 1918 and beyond, men and women of the BEF expected to be fed every day, and they were. Despite the appalling conditions of trench warfare, transport problems, mud and the weather, the men and women in the forces were fed every day. If the meals they received were not always delicious, they were filling and sustaining. It is no coincidence that the motto of the Army Catering Corps (ACC) was ‘We Sustain!’ The motto remains that of the modern Royal Logistic Corps (RLC) and this book tells the story of how that miracle of sustenance was achieved.
INTRODUCTION
From 1815 to 1914
THE DUKE OF Wellington’s preparation for the campaign in the Peninsula included the development of a working commissariat (department of the army charged with providing food and forage), but this does not mean that this was easy or that the treasury in Whitehall were happy with the additional expense. One problem was that, on the outset of the operations, the commissaries were mostly inexperienced and they had a skeleton staff to superintend the supplies to all units. At this time, rations were issued by the commissariat in the evening, usually for three days at a time. One day’s ration was issued to the men, while the others were held at a regimental headquarters. In Spain in 1813, every soldier was entitled to a daily ration of a 1 pound (lb) of meat, 1lb of biscuit (or 1½lb of bread), and a quart of beer (or a pint of wine, or a 1/3 pint of spirits). When the army halted, ovens were built so that bread could be baked and meat was obtained from butchered cattle, which had been driven along behind the marching columns. The meat was usually boiled by small messes of soldiers in a communal pot, to which was added pulses and vegetables. This provided a soup for the evening and a joint of cooked meat, which could be eaten cold the next day. It was during the Peninsula War that British soldiers were first issued with an individual cooking vessel called, not surprisingly, the ‘mess tin’. This was a two-part, tin-plated steel item, roughly D-shaped, to fit against the body or pack, and provided with a handle so it could be held over a fire or used as an eating vessel. It was far from ideal, as too much heat would cause the tin plate to melt and soldiers cooking for themselves used vastly more fuel than communal cookery. However, the ability to make tea and, in some cases coffee, was recognised as a valuable contribution to the soldier’s diet.
ARMY COOK’S TIP NO.1
From Log Book of GNR Smith, 368 Siege Battery, RGA, May 1917
In the period after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, greater importance had been attached to feeding the army, and the construction of barracks throughout the country meant that it was easy to superintend the feeding of troops. Previously they had been quartered on willing civilians or in public houses, where they were supplied by the residents at the government’s expense. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the soldier’s ration at home comprised 1lb of bread and ¾lb of meat daily – for this food 6d per day was stopped from his pay – and, although cooking facilities were available in the new barracks, they were of a very basic character. The cooking utensils available to each company were two copper pots (‘coppers’), one for potatoes and the other for meat, which were always boiled, as no ovens were available for roasting or baking, and so the soldier had to put up with the eternal boiled beef and beef broth served as hot or cold meat for his two meals per day. Breakfast was served at 7.30 a.m. and dinner at 12.30 p.m., after which he was without food unless he was able to purchase something to sustain him for the next nineteen hours.21 Although this might seem surprising to modern diners, it was clearly perfectly acceptable at the time and an order for the army issued by the Adjutant General’s Office, dated 1 January 1882, makes it clear that the system was carefully regulated:
In Camp or Barracks the Captain or Subaltern of the Day must visit and inspect the Kettles at the hour appointed for Cooking, and no Kettle is to be taken from the Kitchens till this inspection is made, and the Signal is given for the Men to dine, which should be at the same hour throughout the Garrison or Camp. Independent of this Regimental Arrangement, the Officers must daily and hourly attend to the Messing, and to every circumstance connected with the Economy of their Troops and Companies.22
In the period of peace that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars there were few occasions when the Home Army had the opportunity for collective training, and in 1853 a ‘camp of exercise’ was established on Cobham Common, under the direction of the Prince Consort and the Duke of Cambridge. This two-month exercise was designed to give every regiment of cavalry and infantry, together with the artillery, engineers and all supporting services, the opportunity to co-operate as a force under active service conditions. Wells had already been sunk to supply fresh water, and the kitchens were specially built from mud over the trenches. Although the results of the experiment were not conclusive, they were a useful preparation for the force that would be sent to the Crimea just two years later. Although the invasion of the Crimea and the Battle of the Alma were successful, the Siege of Sebastopol, which began in the autumn of 1854, was to be a disaster. The principal reason for the high death rate at Sebastopol was not enemy action, but the inability of the army to supply the soldiers in the trenches overlooking the city with food, fuel or safe water. This situation has commonly been ascribed to the army’s neglect of supply in the preceding period of peace. It was, in fact, the result of treasury penny-pinching, such as the abolition of the Royal Wagon Train in 1833, which had been established in the Peninsula War to assist the commissariat. The intention was that, in peacetime, the wagon train had no function and could be axed. It was planned, at least by the treasury, that local wagons and horses would be hired in any future campaign. These were not forthcoming when the ‘Army of the East’ landed on Russian soil and supply handicapped the first year of the war until the innovative solution of a specially constructed military railway provided a ‘modern’ form of transport.
Another innovation of the campaign was the arrival of Alexis Soyer, who was born in France but by 1837 had become head chef at the Reform Club in London, and who later became an expert on economical charity cookery23. Soyer took with him the first prototypes of his famous field-cooking stove: this was cylindrical and it stood on short legs, under the lid was a copper and below was the fire, fed through a small hatch in the front centre, the cowled chimney rising up from the back. The inventor had refused to patent it in case anyone would think that his offer of the ‘Soyer Stove’ to the army had been made for his personal profit.24 The stove took his name and would continue to be used by the British Army on campaigns as varied as the Zulu War, the First and Second World Wars, the Falklands War and, finally, the First Gulf War in 1991. The great advantages of the Soyer Stove were the economical way in which it used fuel, it was light and portable and could be used without the flame being seen. As the stove could be used for stews, roasting, baking and steaming, plus making tea, coffee and hot chocolate, its adaptability was a great asset and an enormous advantage over previous systems of open fire cookery. Soyer started work in the hospitals at Scutari, where he revised the diets of the staff and patients and introduced new catering procedures, so that instead of the so-called cooking of the basic rations of 1lb meat, bread and potatoes, he drew up numerous menus of soups, stews and seasoned meat, and supplemented the diet by local purchases and introduced beef tea, jellies and rice for the invalid diet.
From Log Book of Pte C. Leveratt, 1916.
Beef Tea Recipe
• Cut meat into small pieces, remove all fat and skin.
• Place into cooking vessel, add cold water.
• Allow to stew gently till [sic] all strength is extracted, removing scum as it rises on top.
• A good method is to place the beef in jar with lid & required amount of water & place in oven.
• Strain through fine seive [sic] or muslin about 1 quart of cold water to 1lb of beef.
From Log Book of Pte C. Leveratt, No. 32880, E Company, 1st Garr. Battn, Worcester Regt, 1916
In late August 1855, Soyer officially opened his first camp and bivouac kitchen at Sebastopol and, using seven large Soyer Stoves, a banquet was prepared entirely from army rations. His rations were distributed and a succession of army cooks were introduced to the new system. This was a necessary development as the Commission of Enquiry held in 1857 into the sanitary state of the army reported: ‘The first step must be to instruct our soldiers in the rudiments of the art of cooking, of which they are now lamentably deficient’.25
Horace Wyndham, who enlisted in 1890, made this observation concerning the period:
During the last six years especially barrack feeding has made brilliant strides. Dishes of meat are supplied for breakfast; roast, stews, curries, puddings and pies for dinner; and even the despised tea meal is generally supplemented by some appetising repasts have been replaced not only by an abundance, but by such variety of savoury food that the soldier who still complains of hunger must be either a fool or a glutton.26
By contrast, he singles out some of the men taken into regimental cookhouses who were without the slightest aptitude for the work: ‘They were haphazardly taken from the ranks, and pitch-forked in a kitchen.’27 Wyndham also remained unconvinced that the catering was well organised and commented on overcrowded cookhouses, badly cooked meat and the delay between food being prepared for inspection and service. If food in barracks was often poor, preparing hot meals for troops in the field was dealt with by a combination of Soyer Stoves, improvised ovens using trenches and constructions of clay, turf or even hollowed out anthills, as well as the ‘Aldershot Oven’ (more of which later). During the campaign in South Africa, 1899–1902, mention is frequently made of corned beef (bully beef) and a ‘Maconochie’ ration, an innovation of meat and vegetables. These could be eaten from the tin or added to the ‘camp kettles’ or ‘dixies’ to produce an all-in-one stew. These tinned rations would form a staple for the war that followed.
From ‘Manual of Military Cooking, 1910’.
