The Second World War Through Soldiers' Eyes by James Goulty

Author:James Goulty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781473875067
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Food, Cooking and Rations

It is difficult not to overstate the importance of food to soldiers, particularly as a morale booster to those in the front line, where it formed part of their routine and was something to look forward to. In July 1944 during the thick of the fighting in Normandy, Sergeant Charles Murrell commented ‘next to mail from home, tea and food and our issue of seven cigarettes, are the only events, the only things to look forward to’. Similarly, Terrence Dillon, a regular officer with 1st Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment during the 1942 campaign in Burma, observed how fatigued men were revived by ‘a good hot breakfast’.

During the early years of the war complaints about messing arrangements and the quality of food were common amongst soldiers and featured in contemporary morale reports. While stationed in Lincolnshire during 1939, Trooper Ray Ellis found that the food was badly cooked and had to be transported several miles from the cookhouse in open containers on the back of a truck. Consequently, ‘it was always cold and congealed and it was usually covered in dust’. The diet seldom varied either: ‘Porridge, bacon and beans for breakfast, bully beef sandwiches at mid-day and greasy stew at night.’ He recalled that the cooks appeared to be selected from the grubbiest and most illiterate men in his battery. This was typified by one ‘filthy man with a pair of greasy mittens on his hands, dipping his mug into a dixie of cooling mutton stew and of him pouring the congealing mess onto my enamel plate’.

However, as the war progressed and the army expanded, it attempted to improve the situation, as evident by the formation of the Army Catering Corps in 1941. Typically, British soldiers were reasonably fed when out of the front line, even if the army diet could prove stodgy and monotonous. Infantryman Bill Cheall recorded that ahead of an overseas deployment in 1942, the food at his camp in Britain, was ‘usually very good and wholesome … I don’t ever remember going hungry’. Breakfast usually included strong tea, porridge, sausages, eggs and bacon and large amounts of bread. Evening meals comprised ‘sardines, and a seven pound tin of jam on the table, always plenty of bread and margarine with tea’.

Monica Jackson served with the ATS as part of a mixed anti-aircraft battery during 1944 and recalled, that to break up the routine her commanding officer allowed men and women to hold concerts and tea parties at weekends. They were given permission to wear civilian clothes and when the ATS girls ‘sent home for party dresses and shoes … we found to our horror that army rations had put pounds on our hips and waistlines’.

Most units, even on active service, attempted to maintain officers’ and sergeants’ messes where a degree of luxury could be experienced along with foodstuffs that made a change from basic rations. For example, ‘A’ Squadron Nottinghamshire Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry ran an officers’ mess in the Western Desert from the back of a 3-ton army truck.

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