A “well-researched, well-written, humorous and engaging” exploration of soldiers’ rations during World War I (Destructive Music). Napoleon Bonaparte is often credited with saying that “an army marches on its stomach.” A hundred years after his time, the soldiers of the Great War would do little marching. Instead, they would fight their battles from cold, muddy trenches, looking out across No Man’s Land towards another set of trenches that housed the enemy. It is one of the remarkable successes of the war that they rarely went hungry. During the war, the army grew from its peacetime numbers of 250,000 to well over 3 million. They needed three meals a day and, using the men’s own letters and diaries, John Hartley tells the story of the food they ate, how it got to them in those trenches and what they thought of it. It’s the story of eating bully beef and army “dog biscuits” under fire and it’s the story of the enjoyment of food parcels from home or eating egg and chips in a café on a rare off-duty evening. It’s also the story of the lives of loved ones at home—how they coped with rationing and how women changed their place in society, taking on jobs previously held by men, many working as farm laborers in the Women’s Land Army. This is a book which will appeal to food lovers as well as those with an interest in military and social history.
The Australian Imperial Force, first raised in 1914 for overseas war service, became better known by its initials - the "AIF". There was a distinct character to those who enlisted in the earliest months and who were destined to fight on Gallipoli. During the war the AIF took its place among the great armies of the world, on some of history's oldest battlefields. The Australians would attack at the Dardanelles, enter Jerusalem and Damascus, defend Amiens and Ypres, and swagger through the streets of Cairo, Paris, and London, with their distinctive slouch hats and comparative wealth of six shillings per day. However, the legend of the AIF is shrouded in myth and mystery. Was Beersheba the last great cavalry charge in history? Did the AIF storm the red light district of Cairo and burn it to ground while fighting running battles with the military police? Was the AIF the only all-volunteer army of World War I? Graham Wilson's Bully Beef and Balderdash shines an unforgiving light on these and other well-known myths of the AIF in World War I, arguing that these spectacular legends simply serve to diminish the hard-won reputation of the AIF as a fighting force. Graham Wilson mounts his own campaign to rehabilitate the historical reputation of the force and to demonstrate that misleading and inaccurate embellishment does nothing but hide the true story of Australia's World War I fighting army. Bully Beef and Balderdash deliberately tilts at some well-loved windmills and, for those who cherish the mythical story of the AIF, this will not be comfortable reading. Yet, given the extraordinary truth of the AIF's history, it is certainly compelling reading.
Bourbons. Custard Creams. Rich Tea. Jammie Dodgers. Chocolate Digestives. Shortbread. Ginger snaps. Which is your favourite? British people eat more biscuits than any other nation; they are as embedded in our culture as fish and chips or the Sunday roast. We follow the humble biscuit's transformation from durable staple for sailors, explorers and colonists to sweet luxury for the middling classes to comfort food for an entire nation. Like an assorted tin of biscuits, this charming and beautifully illustrated book has something to offer for everyone, combining recipes for hardtack and macaroons, Shrewsbury biscuits and Garibaldis, with entertaining and eye-opening vignettes of social history.
An Army marches on its stomach, observed Napoleon, a hundred and fifty years later General Rommel remarked that the British should always be attacked before soldiers had had an early morning cup of tea. This book, written to raise money for the Army Benevolent Fund and with a Foreword by General Lord Dannatt, sets out the human story of the food and "brew-ups" of the front-line soldier from the Boer War to Helmand. Throughout, the importance of the provision of food, or even a simple mug of tea, for morale and unit fellowship as well as for the need of the calories required for battle is highlighted with many examples over the century. For many, until 1942, the basis of food was "bully beef" and hard biscuit, supplemented by whatever could be found locally, all adequate but monotonous. Sometimes supply failed, on occasions water also. The extremes of hardship being when regiments were besieged, as in Ladysmith in the Boer War and Kut el-Amara in Iraq in the 1914-18 war. At Kut soldiers had, at best, hedgehogs or birds fried in axle-grease with local vegetation. On the Western Front the Retreat from Mons in August 1914 was almost as severe. The transport of food is as interesting a story as the food itself, ranging from oxen, horses, mules, camels, even reindeer and elephants to motor transport and aircraft in different theatres at different times. The first airdrop of food, not very successful, was in fact at Kut el-Amara in 1916. The inter-war years experiences of mountaineers and polar explorers, supplemented by academic diet studies of the unemployed in London and North England led to the introduction of the varied composite, or 'compo' rations, marking an enormous improvement in soldiers' food, an improvement commented upon by the bully beef and biscuits-fed 8th Army advancing into Tunisia from Libya on meeting the 1st Army which had landed in Algeria with tins of compo. The Italian campaigns of 1943-45, especially the Salerno and Anzio landings and the battle for Monte Cassino, presented particular difficulties. At Cassino food reached forward units on mules with Basuto muleteers and Indian porters for the last stage to men in ground holes or scrapes. Soldiers landing in Normandy and fighting on into Germany were generally well fed even during a hard 1944-45 winter. The worst suffering, though, fell on soldiers in the Burma campaign, especially in the Chindit columns. In one unit, the only food available at one time was the chaplain's store of Communion wafers. Many men died unnecessarily from the results of poor feeding. In the end of empire colonial campaigns soldiers were generally well fed even if the food was monotonous. Units in the Korean War experienced difficulties at the onset; in the Borneo jungle campaigns of the 1960s the problem was not so much the provision of food for patrols as how to eat it without the smell of the food and refuse from the packs giving positions away. For the Falklands War special cold weather compo had to be provided and was eaten on the long 'yomps' or 'tabs' marches. The soldier on the streets of Northern Ireland often lived on egg "banjo" sandwiches but real hardship was suffered by one Welsh battalion besieged by the Serbs in Gorazde during the Bosnia operations when Vitamin C deficiency led to scurvy. The book ends with food supply, often based on whole or part swapping with American military food (usually below British standards) in the Iraq operations and in Afghanistan. An appendix sets out the contents of a typical box of rations issued to a soldier in Helmand in 2011, very generous in quantity and easily prepared. One side of the box carries a stern message to the effect that a soldier must consume the entire contents in order to maintain full fighting efficiency. Such injunctions were not marked on the boxes of food sent forward to the troops in the Boer War; there the boxes were stamped with the initials of the Senior Catering Office Field Force. "Scoffs here at last." The work has been compiled from documents in the Royal Logistic Corps Museum at Deepcut, from memoirs, letters and interviews, and from the superb collection of regimental histories in the library of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. All royalties due to the author for this book will be sent to the Army Benevolent Fund, The Soldiers' Charity.
During the Second World War, how were the multitude of items required by the soldiers in the front line selected, ordered and delivered, and how were they produced? In this the second volume in her detailed, scholarly study of the army’s logistical system, Janet Macdonald describes the necessity for central advanced planning for each expeditionary force as well as those engaged in home defence, and the complex organization of personnel who performed these tasks, from the government and military command in London to those who distributed the equipment on the battlefield. Armies have always required large amounts of material, but by the Second World War the numbers of men involved had grown exponentially, their equipment had become mechanized and their deployment was world wide. Elaborate planning and administration at every level had to ensure that items of all kinds were collected, transported and handed out in every theatre of the war. The scale of the operation was enormous and it had to be performed to critical timetables and was sometimes threatened by enemy action, and it was vital to the army’s success.
Gardens I spend a lot of quiet time in gardens, And not alone, for God is also there. In gardens, joy prevails against despair, For seeds of hope and faith and love and joy Grow very well in gardens. In Heart and Soul, retired high school English teacher Jack London Riehl shares a poignant collection of poetic family reminiscence, light military verse, and tender love poems that provides an engaging portrayal of one man’s life. Jack Riehl begins his compilation with his first two poems he wrote at age eighteen—a required assignment for all high school yearbook staff that culminated in fueling his life-long passion for written verse. In his unique style, Riehl interjects a mix of wry humor and a whimsical view of life as he offers an armchair philosopher’s insight into how he learned to conquer disappointment, face the dilemmas of a soldier, laugh at himself, and think youthfully as he journeyed through eighty-eight adventurous years. Accompanied by over twenty timeless photographs, Heart and Soul offers wisdom for both the young and the old as it tenderly leads others through the circle of life.
Contains eleven landmark essays that explore the significance and meaning of nursing, with a wide geographic range that expands the existing literature on nursing work
It is said that 'an army marches on its stomach', but histories of the First World War usually concentrate on its political and military aspects. The gargantuan task of keeping the British Expeditionary Force fed and watered is often overlooked, yet without adequate provision the soldiers would never have been able to fight. Tommy couldn't get enough tea, rum or fags, yet his commanders sent him bully beef and dog biscuits. But it was amazing how 2 million men did not usually go short of nourishment, although parcels from home, canteens and estaminets had a lot to do with that. Incredibly, Tommy could be in a civilised town supping beer, wine, egg and chps, and a few hours later making do with bully beef in a water-filled trench. Alan Weeks examines how the army got its food and drink and what it was like.
