We all must eat. Whoever we are, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we all need to eat.
So, on Anzac Day it seems fitting to think about how Australian soldiers were fed in World War One.
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In The Broken Years. Australian Soldiers in the Great War (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1975), Bill Gammage describes the conditions at Gallipoli where soldiers ‘were expected to carry their own supplies and water–every day at least one man in eight had to carry water up the steep slopes’ and where the men were ‘perpetually exhausted’ existing on ‘a third of a gallon of water per day, for all purposes, and a frugal diet, almost always of iron rations, which taxed the strength of men already over worked’ (Gammage, p. 64). Without proper attention to the need for sanitation flies rose to plague proportions in the warmer months ‘and men could not avoid swallowing them with their meals’. One man wrote that as soon as he opened a tin of jam the flies rushed in ‘all fighting amongst themselves’, and, as he tried to eat his biscuit spread with jam, ‘a lot of flies flew into my mouth and beat about inside’ (p. 77). Men complained of the monotony of ‘bully and biscuits’ and broke their teeth on the hard tack.
Wilson concedes that bully beef (tinned corned meat) and biscuits were staples because they were easy to supply and store. The bully beef was easy to cook – either minced, fried in slices or used in stews, and could be eaten cold if necessary. The biscuits could be broken up and cooked as oatmeal or even, if converted to crumbs, used as the basis for pastry. Although Wilson (pp. 23–26) describes a more varied diet, including cheese, issues of fresh meat, potatoes and onions, he concludes that the food available on the Gallipoli peninsular was ‘inadequate for the climate and the job’. ‘The appalling effect of the rations on the troops can be judged by the fact that following the evacuation the physical condition of the troops was so poor that the Director of Medical Services AIF ordered that all men who had served on Gallipoli be allowed an extra pound of bread and an extra pound of meat per man per day.’ (Wilson, p. 26)
On the Western Front conditions were different but by no means any better. Bill Gammage says the winter of 1916-17 was ‘the harshest in France for forty years.’ ‘Rain began in October, and shellfire churned the soft ground to a waste of mud and water. … The mud often prevented the delivery of fresh water, so that the men were sickened by drinking fluid contaminated by dead bodies, and it delayed ration parties so that they gave up, or lost their loads in shellfire.’ (Gammage, p. 173). Private T. J. Cleary, an electrician, from Annandale, NSW., wrote in his diary in the early days of November 1916 (from Gammage, p.174) :
1 November. Very short of tucker yesterday. Short again today. No Breakfast. The Ration Cart has been gone 36 hours and not returned yet. Very cold and miserable.
2 November. No Biscuit or bread for Dinner but that is common now.
3 November. Breakfast 2 inches of Bacon and a couple of Spoonsful of suger. No Bread No Biscuits nothing else. Dinner Small Spud ½ Tin of Bully.
Wilson explains that ‘no movement to or from the trenches could be carried out in daylight hours and thus a hot meal could not be carried forward for the midday meal.’ In situations where the food could be transported on wagons these would ‘usually carry forward the food for the next day’s midday meal and this would consist of tins of preserved meat…bread, biscuits, jam and an issue of sugar. Along with the tea and sugar came the water in tins and an issue of hard coal or charcoal for heating the water for tea.’ (Wilson, pp. 30–31). Hard coal and charcoal were the preferred cooking fuels because they gave off little smoke. At lunch the men either cooked themselves a meal utilizing bully beef or tinned stew, or simply ate cold meat and biscuits.
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The trolley used for transporting meals from the cookhouse to the mess hut. Source: Australian War Memorial |
In the narrative of his experiences, Somme Mud (Sydney: Random House, 2006), Private Edward Lynch describes the tribulations of a ration party carrying food up to the line at the end of the 1916 winter (pp. 111–114):
The sergeant leads off and we follow. Trudging across the black mud to Switch Trench where we find our cookers set up in a trench wall. The cooks are friendly. We get some good hot stew into us and some bread, jam and cheese and have several tins of tea–good strong cook’s tea with milk and sugar in it.…
We climb into the straps that fasten a great heavy container of boiling stew upon our backs and stagger forth well loaded up. The sergeant and a few more carry dixies of tea between them with bags of bread and tins of jam, which crack them on the shins every false step.
These containers were ‘hot boxes–wooden boxes insulated with straw and holding two metal containers for food or hot liquids. Added to the hot boxes would be sacks or sand bags containing bread or biscuits’ (Wilson, p. 30). A ‘dixie’ was a deep, cylindrical container with handles and a lid. Lynch continues:
The sergeant-cook dismisses us with 'Good luck and see you don’t forget to have those dixies and containers back here before daylight.' And we’re off with the food supply for the men in the front line. On across the mud. These great awkward containers get heavier and heavier and their straps cut into our shoulders. We get our hands back under the bottom to ease the weight on our shoulders and on we go, humped like camels.
Fritz starts shelling so we jog. The stew starts to rattle. Every now and then we stumble and boiling-hot stew splashes across the back of our necks. Boiling stew and icy-cold rain together trickle down our spines. We’re very far from happy. … But we struggle on.
One of the party, known as Longun, stumbles into a shell hole ‘getting well scalded with the red hot stew spilt all over him’ and emptying the container. As Longun is sorting himself out, emptying the stew out of his tunic pockets and his respirator bag, ‘there comes a high-piercing scream of an approaching shell. In deadly silence and tremendous haste we drop to our knees and try to get as low as we can without spilling the stew over ourselves’. One of the men is injured by the exploding shell. They tend to him, one of the group goes to find stretcher-bearers and they move on once their mate is on his way back to the dressing station. One man shoulders the injured soldier’s stew container while another carries the empty one now filled with tins of jam ‘which, as he walks, rattle more than we like. “See you stop that flamin’ rattling before we get near the line or Fritx’ll machine-gun us,” the sergeant tells him, and the man runs back to the gun pit and gets the sandbag he threw away, jamming it down amongst his tins and on we go.’
At last we reach the front line. The men are glad to see us and their stew. Half an hour’s rest comes our way whilst the section corporals are distributing the food. They don’t know we lost a whole container of stew and we don’t tell them either. They’re complaining enough as it is and blame the cooks for the shortage. Cooks come in handy at times.
The empty containers and dixies are gathered up and we make back to Switch trench and hand them over to the cooks and get another drink of tea.
Wilson argues that army cooks worked hard to offer the troops as varied a diet as possible and credits them as ‘one of the major morale boosting factors of the army’.
Whatever else had happened, as the exhausted, filthy and famished remnants of the units staggered out of the line they would know that unit cooks would have a hot meal and a goodly supply of scalding hot tea waiting at the billets. One of the arts of the quartermaster was to be able to assess how many men would survive an operation and cater accordingly. Quite often, of course, they got it wrong, usually overfeeding. This must have been a terribly sad sight for the cooks as they saw how few men had survived to eat the meal they had prepared.’ (Wilson, p. 32)
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