The Amateur Army | Page 4

then appeared the
following in Battalion Orders: "From to-morrow until further orders,
rations will be issued at the men's billets." This announcement caused
no little sensation, aroused a great deal of comment, and created a
profound feeling of satisfaction in the battalion. Thenceforth rations
were served out at the billets, and the householders were ordered to do
the cooking. My landlady was delighted. "Not half feeding you; that's a
game," she said. "And you going to fight for your country! But wait till
you see the dishes I'll 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