Tommy (46 page)
Authors: Richard Holmes
Bully was often so common in the trenches that men would not eat it out of the line if there was any alternative. Captain Gerald Burgoyne complained that:
The wastage in rations is terrible. Going round the place [Kemmel, behind the Ypres salient] this morning, I saw enough tins of Bully thrown away, or simply left in their boxes, to feed a Battalion. The men really get far too much, far more than they can eat, and extra rations like tinned salmon are counted extra and the same amount of Bully is issued to the men. The same with the biscuits. Men prefer to buy bread, and tins after tins of biscuits are lying about everywhere â¦
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Burgoyne is the only officer I have encountered whose memoirs repeatedly criticise the men he commanded, and it is hard to know quite what this dyspeptic officer would have made of an artillery headquarters where the tent floors and paths were composed entirely of full tins of bully used as paving stones. âI saw whole cheeses thrown to the pigs,' remembered Corporal Ronald Ginns of the Royal Engineers, âand paths made of bully beef tins unopened, while many a good fire was obtained from army biscuits. But it was the sameness that caused us to spend our pay on French food.'
164
Captain Joseph Maclean reported from a front-line trench in March 1918 that:
This morning breakfast was
café au lait,
(tinned) bacon and sausage, bread and marmalade, which is pretty good going in a place like this. Breakfast is the best meal of the day. For dinner we have to fall back on bully beef, while tea is generally tea, bread and jam, or cheese, perhaps with sardines or something like that. Of course everything is more or less filthy. During the night the men get stew and tea, which is brought up for them in âhot food containers', and also rum, and I take a share of each â and the last is not the least.
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Corporal Frederick Hodges of 10/Lancashire Fusiliers reckoned that:
Our rations were adequate, provided they reached us. There was bread, cheese, jam, margarine, tea and sometimes Maconochie's, a meat and vegetable ration we called M and V. Water, which was carried up in two-gallon petrol cans, was usually flavoured with petrol and sometimes also with chloride of lime, presumably when the source of supply was suspect.
The bread ration varied; four or five men to a loaf when we had recently received a new draft to replace casualties, or three to a loaf when we had recently suffered casualties but still received their rations. As the ration party came in sight, the first question we asked was âHow many to a bun?' â¦
The issue of a tin of Fray Bentos was always greeted with great delight because it was the best brand, and also because bully beef was usually put directly into a stew with dried vegetables. The latter were quite a novelty; I had never seen them before and wondered what was in the two heavy sandbags I carried up one night slung across my shoulder. They were full of varicoloured small, hard pieces that swelled into larger pieces of vegetables when soaked by the cook. We liked our tea strong, sergeant-major's, we called it, especially with condensed milk. Sometimes we had porridge, always knows as
burghu
[more usually
burgoo]
, which was one of the Indian names we had picked up from old soldiers who had served in India.
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If Fray Bentos was well regarded, W. H. Davies's bully was not. Lieutenant Edmund Blunden befriended a stray terrier in the trenches, but made the mistake of giving him this unpopular brand, âso he may have thought me a danger' and ran away.
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Officers often ate better, even in the line, as Bernard Martin acknowledged.
In fact we did supplement rations when we could, extras like sardines and tinned fruits â pears, apricots, peaches, pineapple chunks. Otherwise we ate exactly the same rations as the men, brought up usually at night by a Ration Party. Of course they didn't always reach the front line. I remember once living for nearly three weeks on bully beef and biscuits (hard square half-inch thick, as sold for very large dogs) and jam (always plum and apple in the army).
168
Taking supplementary rations into the line was not confined to officers, though the consequences were not always happy. Sapper Arthur Sambrook was living in a dugout behind the Loos front in 1916 when another soldier produced:
a Camembert cheese he had bought into Number
3
Section dug-out and proclaiming that it was an âepicure's dream', but his comrades did not agree, so it was decided to drop the delicacy into the stove-pipe sticking through the roof of Section 4's dug-out â¦Â Our stoves were homemade affairs consisting of a large paint drum, with a pipe (made of biscuit tins hammered round a pole) let into the top, and leading straight up through the surface of the ground. Anything dropped down this pipe dropped into the fire below. After dark we scouted the position, and finding no one about the cheese was dropped down the pipe, with a turf put over the chimney-top so that the inmates below would get the full benefit of the aroma! The resulting stench and smoke compelled the Section 4 men to put their gas-helmets on!
169
Requests for food, often linked to complaints about the monotony of rations and the exorbitant prices charged in shops in the rear areas, feature prominently in letters home. Private George Adams told his parents that: âWe get plenty of tuck out here, bread, cheese and bacon and a butter issue twice a week and stew for dinner. It is a bit monotonous.' He had to pay: â3d for a cake like those you send me and 2 francs (1/8d) for a tin of ham like you get at home for about 4½d and 10d for a 2½d tin of sardines.' He thanked his mother for the cake she had sent, but asked her to wrap future cakes separately from the soap âas it spoils the taste'.
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In the winter of 1914 Second Lieutenant John Reith was receiving parcels of one sort or another every two or three days, including:
chocolates and sweets of all sorts. There was a large consignment for distribution among the men. And one evening a splendid box of candy arrived from a girl of whom I had never heard; others followed from her at regular intervals. It was not until the spring when, being invited to tea at my home, she explained the mystery to my parents. Shortly after we had gone overseas a photograph of the officers was published in a Glasgow newspaper. This young lady and some of her friends allocated us out among themselves with this highly satisfactory result. I never met her.
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Unknown well-wishers did not just confine themselves to sending food. In January 1916 Gerald Burgoyne's sergeant major was putting on a new pair of socks when he found a packet of cigarettes in the toe with a note which read:
Dear Soldier,
Soon these socks will be worn out. When you want another pair, write to
Miss Meta Kerr
Amullagh
Islandmagee
Ireland
A Merry Christmas and a safe return.
MK
172
Bernard Livermore received: âCake from my old dairyman, dainties from my people and friends; all were shared out among the members of my section.' An enormous pair of socks were christened Toulouse and Toulong, but stitched together they made a passable body belt. And a helpful aunt appended a patriotic verse written by her clergyman husband, which had found favour with a local newspaper:
Fling out the Flag!! Fling out the Flag!!
And fight for all that we revere.
Fling out the Flag!! Fling out the Flag!!
Battle for all that we hold dear.
Fling out the Flag!! Fling out the Flag!! (etc., etc.)
He gratefully replied that what she termed âthose brave heroes, the colleagues in the trenches' had discovered that the verses could be set to the tune of
Fight the Good Fight.
But he did not add that the heroes had tinkered with the words:
Fling out the Flag!! Fling out the Flag!!
Fling the Old Man orf' isâNag!!
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Pooling the contents of food parcels was the rule for officers and men alike. âIn the early days,' wrote Lieutenant Roe,
many members of one's family sent out food parcels regularly. They were always pooled and rationed out with the greatest impartiality. Messrs Fortnum and Mason must have flourished exceedingly thereby. Their food parcels were of excellent quality and extremely well packed, for they arrived at company headquarters quite intact and unspoiled by the long transit from Piccadilly to French Flanders.
174
Stuart Dolden came out of the line at Loos in 1915 to find that:
The Battalion parcel post had been kept back while we had been in action [at Hulluch], but this was now served out and amounted to seventy mail bags. I received thirteen parcels, and for days I hardly touched any rations. A new draft from Rouen was in the billet when we arrived from the trenches, and as they had been on short rations, the rest of us made a dump of unopened parcels on the floor and told the newcomers to sail into them. They thought we were the kindest fellows in the world, and never was a reputation so easily gained.
175
Parcels sent to soldiers who had been killed were often opened and their contents devoured, smoked or worn â although one infantry section could not bring itself to eat a dead comrade's twenty-first birthday cake sent out by his mother, and gave it to the less fastidious members of another platoon.
As parcels were usually distributed when a battalion was out of the line, men appreciated a mixture of items that could be eaten at once and others that would fit comfortably into packs or pouches to go up the line. Parcels sent out by the Queen Alexandra Field Force Fund were very popular because their contents were always eminently practical: âTowel, Mittens, Writing Tablet, Laces, Muffler, Sleeping Helmet, Soap, Handkerchief, Box of Matches, Toilet Paper.'
176
At Christmas 1914 an oblong brass box containing tobacco and other goodies was sent out to all officers and soldiers on the Queen's behalf. It was much appreciated, not least because the serviceable box could be put to many uses, but one officer was puzzled by the enclosed card which read: âFrom Mary and the Women of the Empire.' He thought that he knew most of those jolly girls at the Empire Music Hall, but could not quite picture Mary. Oxo was every bit as popular a gift as its frequent advertisements suggested. âJust before “stand-to” Priest and I made Oxo for Captain Whitmore and Mr Swainson,' wrote Rifleman Percy Jones.
But before the water boiled it got dark and the fire made an awful light. Captain Whitmore wanted his âOxo' so badly that he didn't order the fire to be put out, but partly covered it with a waterproof sheet, under which I had to crawl to blow the fire!! I came out like a smoked haddock â eyes streaming with tears!! But the âOxo' was magnificent.
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Chocolate, peppermints, slabs of rich fruitcake, curry powder to enliven the all-in stew, tinned fish and meat, gentleman's relish, processed cheese (âcheese possessed' when it became a ration issue), in it rolled, from hundreds of emporia from Jermyn Street to Arkwright's corner shop. But perhaps the most welcome single item was not food at all, but tobacco.
The British army marched less on its stomach than in a haze of smoke. Woodbines hung from pale lips, black cutty pipes jutted fiercely from beneath Old Bill moustaches and Virginia cigarettes dangled from well-manicured fingers (âstinkers' â Turkish cigarettes â were frowned on in some messes). Cigarettes and tobacco were issued free, sent out in parcels, bought from canteens in the rear areas or French shops, and traded as currency. A soldier-barber would expect two Woodbines for a haircut, and a piece of gauze, used by armourers to clear rifle-barrels but much sought after by soldiers who were expected to use boiling water (ânot easily procurable'), followed by flannelette was worth a whole packet.
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Although theft within the immediate military community was frowned upon, cigarettes might sometimes be âwon' or âwogged' from the unguarded kit of outsiders. When Albert Bullock and his mate found themselves in a Passchendaele trench with âa B Coy chap' who bolted when the trench was blown in: âWe dug ourselves out and went through his pack. Found 200 Woodbines.'
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As far as cigarettes were concerned, Frederick Hodges believed that: âWoodbines were prized above all other brands because the tobacco was mature, whereas White Cloud and other unknown brands were hated because of the acrid taste of green tobacco which we suspected had been foisted on the government by fat profiteers who smoked cigars themselves.'
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Sidney Rogerson wondered who had named â“Ruby Queens” or “Red Hussars” â¦Â those weird war brands of “gaspers”.' Most soldiers smoked, and most smokers preferred cigarettes. âBy far the greater number of men smoked cigarettes rather than pipes,' affirmed David Jones,
and those who did complained bitterly of the particular blend of ration tobacco. So that the issuing of these things usually called for considerable tact on the part of the NCOs in charge, and strained the amiability of those among whom they were to be divided.
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Ronald Ginns agreed.
In fact, never whilst in France was I short of tobacco & I never had to buy any. At any time I had as much as 8oz in a week & when, later on, I went on leave, I took home a pack full for my dad. But this army ration tobacco was poor stuff, most â¦Â under fancy names, never heard of either before, or since the war. Those weeks when we had BDV [tobacco] we considered ourselves in luck.
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Jones caught the moment of distribution on the Somme, with pipe men eager for the more negotiable cigarettes:
Always âad fags corporal, always 'av' of.
Seen you with a pipe, Crower.
Not me corporal.
Who are these pipe smokers â '35 Float, you're a pipe man.
Somehow's right off it corporal, since they brought us into this place.
âStruth â very well â one packet of
Trumpeter
all round â¦
183