Lunch or dinner?

[johnboy]

Read in a book [part of a letter] 'arrived and officers had lunch,men had their dinner.Is this 2 words meaning the same thing?

[squirrel]

Officers had lunch at about mid day and dinner in the evening. 
The men had dinners , main meal of the day, in the middle of the day and tea in the late afternoon.

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

1 minute ago, squirrel said:

The men had dinners , main meal of the day, in the middle of the day and tea in the late afternoon.

That was how it was in our house when we were young.

I suppose my mother had inherited the the term from my grandfather, a GW veteran.

Dinner at dinner time and tea at tea time (with a cup of tea & cake or jam sandwich in late afternoon).

Tea could be a full cooked meal...

Lots of people now refer to their evening meal as supper  don't they?

A question of timing and class (or lack of)  I suppose?

[PhilB]

Well, "school dinners" are at the same time nationwide. (Aren`t they?)

Being brought up in an artisan working class household, my "tea" was at 5pm. It`s a habit that`s stuck with me and I still get Pavlovian dog reactions when the clock strikes five. My children, middle class professionals, find this amusing and insist I wait till "proper" supper time.

Incidentally, I find that a large meal eaten in mid to late evening is not conducive to a good night`s sleep.

Edited 30 May , 2020 by PhilB

[sassenach]

45 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

Dinner at dinner time and tea at tea time (with a cup of tea & cake or jam sandwich in late afternoon).

Tea could be a full cooked meal..

When did you have brunch then?

[johnboy]

Were calories known about then,? I have seen daily food allowances for OR's. Were these based on evidence?

[Moonraker]

Yes, they were. A British manual labourer was thought to need 3,574 calories a day. It is interesting to note that in 2003 a British soldier was reckoned to need between 3,700 and 4,200 calories per day. That's the only reference I've got in my "Wiltshire" notes, which contain quite a bit about soldiers' food. But if you search the GWF for "calories", you'll find many previous threads about nutrition and calorific values

[PhilB]

What time are army meals served these days? I seem to recall tea/dinner was at 5pm.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

That's really interesting.

 

My grandad's diary (he enlisted as a private in the Liverpool pals in September 1914, then became an officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers about a month later, and left this diary which I am hoping to publish shortly)  mentions quite a lot about food - talk about an army marching on its stomach! A quick search of the version to be published reveals that "lunch" features 29 times, "dinner" 73 times!

 

Here is the interesting bit, which I hadn't noticed before:

 

From time to time he sets out details of the routine. Here he is talking about the routine for Company officers just after they arrived in France in May 1915: 

 

Breakfast: Bacon – Eggs – Marmalade – Toast 

Lunch: Bully Beef – Salad – Fruit – Coffee

Tea: Usual

Dinner: Tomato Soup, Roast Beef, Potatoes, Swedes, Prunes, Custard, Coffee

 

Then here he is talking about the routine for the whole unit:

 

Breakfast 8.00am

Roll Call 9.00am

Dinners 1.00pm

Tea 5.00pm

Supper and Roll Call 10.00pm 

 

This seems to be a pattern repeated throughout the diary, though he does talk indiscriminately about "getting dinners for the men" both in the middle of the day and in the evening.

[daggers]

Tiffin?

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

52 minutes ago, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

Swedes, Prunes, 

Gags forcefully...

[sassenach]

No tinned pears with blancmange?

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

Pears, but it looks as though they may have been fresh, as they come with other fruit which must have been fresh (bananas). Blancmange not even once!

And Dai, you'll be glad to know that swedes and prunes (either separately or in combination) only feature once - though I see that he does say that it was a typical menu ….

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

All joking aside, the food, lack of it or quality features very often in letters and diaries, and going hungry must have been a constant weight on soldiers' minds. That the army by and large were able to supply food for millions of men day in day out was a triumph of logistical planning.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

After the extract setting out the "typical menu" (the one that includes the swedes and prunes) my grandfather adds "We were always hungry", but, on the other hand, I agree that it was quite fantastic how the rations were able to follow them and catch up with them in the shambles that was the Somme so as to enable dinner (it was midday on this occasion) to be produced more or less on time.

[Ron Clifton]

In about 1912 the Army carried out an exercise involving a proposed new scale of daily field rations. A platoon of volunteers, commanded by an officer and with a medical officer in attendance, made a march across Salisbury Plan which, IIRC lasted two weeks.

 

A report of the exercise contains this statement:

"The fact that the exercise was referred to in Southern Command offices as 'the hunger march' suggests that the proposed new scale of rations was not considered excessive."

 

This pithy statement is not taken from an officer's private diary, but from an official paper laid before Parliament - a "Blue Book". I often wonder if it was written by a civil servant, or by someone at Southern Command HQ?

 

Ron

[David B]

In the navy meals were at 8am 12pm and 6pm unless your were a watchkeeper (shift). They could eat 45 minutes prior to going to work.  

[Moonraker]

On 31/05/2020 at 22:35, Ron Clifton said:

In about 1912 the Army carried out an exercise involving a proposed new scale of daily field rations. A platoon of volunteers, commanded by an officer and with a medical officer in attendance, made a march across Salisbury Plan which, IIRC lasted two weeks...

It was in 1909.

 

Articles.

 

With details of the rations.

[RegHannay]

On 30/05/2020 at 12:43, A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy said:

That's really interesting.

 

My grandad's diary (he enlisted as a private in the Liverpool pals in September 1914, then became an officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers about a month later, and left this diary which I am hoping to publish shortly)  mentions quite a lot about food - talk about an army marching on its stomach! A quick search of the version to be published reveals that "lunch" features 29 times, "dinner" 73 times!

 

Here is the interesting bit, which I hadn't noticed before:

 

From time to time he sets out details of the routine. Here he is talking about the routine for Company officers just after they arrived in France in May 1915: 

 

Breakfast: Bacon – Eggs – Marmalade – Toast 

Lunch: Bully Beef – Salad – Fruit – Coffee

Tea: Usual

Dinner: Tomato Soup, Roast Beef, Potatoes, Swedes, Prunes, Custard, Coffee

 

Then here he is talking about the routine for the whole unit:

 

Breakfast 8.00am

Roll Call 9.00am

Dinners 1.00pm

Tea 5.00pm

Supper and Roll Call 10.00pm 

 

This seems to be a pattern repeated throughout the diary, though he does talk indiscriminately about "getting dinners for the men" both in the middle of the day and in the evening.

Through curiosity I decided to scan through my grandfathers diary and found Dinner 44 (always evening), lunch 33, breakfast 14 and food 14. Looks like food was on their mind a lot.

Although there are a fair number of occasions where they seem to fend for themselves away from the HQ and away from the front a banquet (mess fees paid) And sometimes a breakdown of the food chain,  8th November 1915 Hohenzollern  Redoubt dugout. "At 11.00 pm an orderly Eventually arrived with bread and a leg of mutton and nothing else. However we were famished. At 11.30 pm straw arrived and the four of us lay down." (I think Reggie was lucky in having a medical orderly who was a good scavenger who cooked well)

[Steven Broomfield]

On 30/05/2020 at 13:58, sassenach said:

No tinned pears with blancmange?

 

Sadly not.

[Steven Broomfield]

On 30/05/2020 at 10:33, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

 

Lots of people now refer to their evening meal as supper  don't they?

A question of timing and class (or lack of)  I suppose?

 

I always think of 'supper' as a slightly class-based concept: my mother was a bit of a snob, and we had 'supper' in the evening, 'Lunch' (a full meal) would be around midday, with tea (bread and butter with jam, cake and lashings of tea) would be around 5.00, with 'supper' (a lighter meal) around 7.00. I can't remember any of my school chums having supper ... for me it has resonances of having a light meal when getting in from the dance or a trip to the theatre (or maybe I read too many English novels)

[sassenach]

In Bridge on the River Kwai Colonel Saito began one of his interviews with Colonel Alec by saying that he was having "rather a rate supper." I think he was having "Engrish corned beef" and "whisky (produce of Scotrand)."

[BIFFO]

please find illustration one always dresses for dinner,

[Ron Clifton]

6 hours ago, Moonraker said:

It was in 1909.

 

Articles.

 

With details of the rations.

Many thanks, Mr Raker. I had forgotten the exact year, but I came across the report when doing some research on Army Estimates in the years leading up to 1914. This report was bound into the same Blue Book volume.

 

Ron

[Steven Broomfield]

I can (just, if I really try) understand why the more recent faces in post 24 have been fuzzed out, but why in the name of Dorothy Tutin have the faces of the three Tommies been fuzzed-over?

 

GDPR? If so, I would say that either some pencil-necked desk jockey has gone too far, or (if that is not the case) it rather sums up everything that's wrong with GDPR,