Kitchener's chocolate bars

[Tinhat47]

Did any of these survive the war or were they eventually melted down for scrap?

[JulianB]

Becke (can't remember which volume / part) wrote that many of these would be found along roadsides in southern England as they were surreptitiously jettisoned by troops on route marches. In the future, he went on, they would be found by puzzled archaeologists !

It's a lovely idea, I've thought of traipsing along country lanes to look and - as an archaeologist - I'd like to look through any records for obscure lumps of iron !

However, my big problem is that I don't know exactly what they look like - does anyone have an illustration handy ?

[per ardua per mare per terram]

They should have kept them, they might have stopped a bullet!

[Martin Bennitt]

Excuse my ignorance but what were K's chocolate bars? A Google search only produces this thread

cheers Martin B

[Tinhat47]

Back when the new armies were training, they handed out heavy rectangles of metal, lead I think,for soldiers to put in their ammunition carriers to simulate the weight of carrying 75 rounds on force marches. They were vaguely chocolate bar-shaped and thus the nickname among the troops was born.

[centurion]

Surely not lead - too expensive.

[JulianB]

I thought they were iron - and it was the colour as much as the shape that gave them their name. I'll try to find the reference in Becke.

[squirrel]

Cast iron?