The Amateur Army | Page 4

make out of the rations when they come."
The rations came. In the early morning a barrow piled with eatables was dragged through our street, and the "ration fatigue" party, full of the novelty of a new job, yelled in chorus, "Bring out your dead, ladies; rations are 'ere!"
"What have you got?" asked my landlady, going to the door. "What are you supposed to leave for the men? Nothing's too good for them that's going to fight for their country."
"Dead rats," said the ration-corporal with a grin.
"Don't be funny. What are my men to get?"
"Each man a pound of fresh meat, one and a half pounds of bread, two taters, two ounces of sugar, and an ounce of tea and three ounces of cheese. And, besides this, every feller gets a tin of jam once in four days."
This looks well on paper, but pot and plate make a difference in the proposition. Army cheese runs to rind rapidly, and a pound of beef is often easily bitten to the bone: sometimes, in fact, it is all bone and gristle, and the ravages of cooking minimise its bulk in a disheartening way. One and a half pound of bread is more than the third of a big loaf, but minus butter it makes a featureless repast. Breakfast and tea without butter and milk does not always make a dainty meal.
Even the distribution of rations leaves much to be desired; the fatigue party, well-intentioned and sympathetic though it be, often finds itself short of provisions. This may in many cases be due to unequal distribution; an ounce of beef too much to each of sixteen men leaves the seventeenth short of meat. This may easily happen, as the ration party has never any means of weighing the food: it is nearly always served out by guesswork. But sometimes the landladies help in the distribution by bringing out scales and weighing the provisions. One lady in our street always weighed the men's rations, and saw that those under her care got the exact allowance. Never would she take any more than her due, and never less. But a few days ago, when weighing sugar and tea, a blast of wind upset the scales, and a second allowance met with a similar fate. Sugar and tea littered the pavement, and finally the woman supplied her soldiers from the household stores. She now leaves the work of distribution in the hands of the ration party, and takes what is given to her without grumbling.
The soldiers' last meal is generally served out about five o'clock in the afternoon, sometimes earlier; and a stretch of fourteen hours intervenes between then and breakfast. About nine o'clock in the evening those who cannot afford to pay for extras feel their waist-belts slacken, and go supperless to bed. And tea is not a very substantial meal; the rations served out for the day have decreased in bulk, bread has wasted to microscopic proportions, and the cheese has diminished sadly in size. A regimental song, pent with soldierly woes, bitterly bemoans the drawbacks of Tommy's tea:
"Bread and cheese for breakfast, For dinner Army stew, But when it comes to tea-time There's dough and rind for you, So you and me Won't wait for tea-- We're jolly big fools if we do."
But those who do not live in billets, and whose worldly wealth fails to exceed a shilling a day, must be content with Army rations, with the tea tasting of coom, and seldom sweetened, with the pebble-studded putty potato coated in clay, with the cheese that runs to rind at last parade, and, above all, with the knowledge that they are merely inconvenienced at home so that they may endure the better abroad.
There is another school of theorists that states that an army moves, not upon its stomach, but upon its feet, the care of which is of vital importance. This, too, finds confirmation in the official pamphlet, which tells the soldier to "Remember that a dirty foot is an unsound foot. See that feet are washed if no other part of the body is," etc.
My right foot had troubled me for days; a pain settled in the arch of the instep, and caused me intense agony when resuming the march after a short halt; at night I would suddenly awake from sleep to experience the sensation of being stabbed by innumerable pins in ankle and toes. Marching in future, I felt, would be a monstrous futility, and I decided that my case was one for the medical officer.
Sick parade is not restricted by any dress order; the sore-footed may wear slippers; the sore-headed, Balaclava helmets; puttees can be discarded; mufflers and comforters may be used. "The sick rabble" is the name given by the men to the crowd that waits outside