TOMMY'S DIET AND OFF-RATION EXTRAS ON THE WESTERN FRONT

[seaJane]

Just come across this which may be of interest:

 

Duffet, Rachel. The stomach for fighting: food and the soldiers of the Great War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.

 

The chapter headings are: Food and war -- Before the war -- First taste: eating in the home camps -- Feeding the men: army provisioning, the cooks and the ASC -- Eating: the men and their rations -- Beyond the ration: scrounging, supplementing and sharing.

 

sJ

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

There's a rather nice story in John Lucy's There's a Devil in the Drum where one of his men - a likeable rogue - tells him that he has a "scheme", and needs10 minutes away from the unit to put it into action. In answer to Lucy's enquiry, he assures him the "scheme" does not involve thieving. When he returns shortly afterwards with a suckling pig, Lucy cannot help commenting that the pig "made good eating" (as did its siblings, distributed to neighbouring sections), but he nevertheless "draw(s) hurriedly away from his dangerous companionship" observing that "I had already acted much too often as an unwilling accessory, before and after, to his undiscovered crimes". I'm guessing that this pilfering from the local farmers can't have been an altogether uncommon occurrence.

Later Lucy describes his men devouring (raw?) some of the onions they found hanging in the attic of their billet, on which occasion Lucy himself actively defended his men against the anger of their hostess (they had had scant food in the last few days, having just experienced a particularly awful engagement).