Rations and Sick Parade

It has been said that an army moves
upon its stomach, and, as if in confirmation of this, the soldier is exhorted
in an official pamphlet “Never to start on
a march with an empty stomach.” To a
hungry rifleman the question of his rations
is a matter of vital importance. For the
first few weeks our food was cooked up and
served out on the parade ground, or in the
various gutter-fringed sheds standing in the
vicinity of our headquarters. The men were
discontented with the rations, and rumour
had it that the troops stationed in a neighbouring
village rioted and hundreds had been placed under arrest.

Sometimes a haunch of roast beef was doled
out almost raw, and potatoes were generally
boiled into pulp; these when served up
looked like lumps of wet putty. Two potatoes,
unwashed and embossed with particles
[pg 24]
of gravel, were allowed to each man; all
could help themselves by sticking their
fingers into the doughy substance and lifting
out a handful, which they placed along with
the raw “roast” on the lid of their mess-tin. This constituted dinner, but often
rations were doled out so badly that several
men only got half the necessary allowance for their meals.

Tea was seldom sufficiently sweetened, and
the men had to pay for milk. After a time
we became accustomed to the Epsom Salts
that a kindly War Office, solicitous for our
well-being, caused to be added, and some of
us may go to our graves insisting on Epsom
Salts with tea. The feeding ground being
in many cases a great distance from the fire,
the tea was cold by the time it arrived at
the men’s quarters. Those who could afford
it, took their food elsewhere: the restaurants
in the vicinity did a roaring trade, and
several new ones were opened. A petition
was written; the men signed it, and decided
to send it to the colonel; but the N.C.O.’s
stepped in and destroyed the document.
“You’ll not do much good at the front,” they
told us, “if you are grumbling already.”

[pg 25]

A week followed the destruction of the
petition, and 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.”

[pg 26]

“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
[pg 27]
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.
[pg 28]
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
[pg 29]
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 the door of the
M.O.’s room at eight in the morning. And
every morning brings its quota of ailing
soldiers; some seriously ill, some slightly,
and a few (as may be expected out of a
[pg 30]
thousand men of all sorts and conditions)
who have imaginary or feigned diseases that
will so often save “slackers” from a hard
day’s marching. The aim and ambition of
these latter seem to be to do as little hard
work as possible; some of them attend
sick parade on an average once a week,
and generally obtain exemption from a day’s
work. To obtain this they resort to several
ruses; headaches and rheumatic pains are
difficult to detect, and the doctor must depend
on the private’s word; a quick pulse and
heightened temperature is engendered by a
brisk run, and this is often a means towards
a favourable medical verdict—that is, when
“favourable” means a suspension of duties.

At a quarter to eight I stood with ten
others in front of the M.O.’s door, on which
a white card with the blue-lettered “No
Smoking” stood out in bold relief. The
morning was bitterly cold, and a sharp,
penetrating wind splashed with rain swept
round our ears, and chilled our hands and
faces. One of the waiting queue had a sharp
cough and spat blood; all this was due,
he told us, to a day’s divisional field exercise,
when he had to lie for hours on the wet
[pg 31]
ground firing “blanks” at a “dummy”
enemy. Another sick soldier, a youth of
nineteen, straight as a lance and lithe as a
poplar, suffered from ulcer in the throat.
“I had the same thing before,” he remarked
in a thin, hoarse voice, “but I got over it
somehow. This time it’ll maybe the hospital. I don’t know.”

An orderly corporal filled in admission
forms and handed them to us; each form
containing the sick man’s regimental number,
name, religion, age, and length of military
service, in addition to several other minor
details having no reference at all to the
matter in hand. These forms were again
handed over to another orderly corporal,
who stood smoking a cigarette under the
blue-lettered notice pinned to the door.

The boy with the sore throat was sitting
in a chair in the room when I entered, the
doctor bending over him. “Would you like
a holiday?” the M.O. asked in a kindly voice.

“Where to, sir?”

“A couple of days in hospital would leave
you all right, my man,” the M.O. continued, “and it would be a splendid rest.”

[pg 32]

“I don’t want a rest,” answered the youth.
“Maybe I’ll be better in the morning, sir.”

The doctor thought for a moment, then:

“All right, report to-morrow again,” he
said. “You’re a brave boy. Some, who are
not the least ill, whine till one is sick—what’s the matter with you?”

“Sore foot, sir,” I said, seeing the M.O.’s eyes fixed on me.

“Off with your boot, then.”

I took off my boot, placed my foot on a chair, and had it inspected.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know, sir. It pains me when marching, and sometimes—”

“Have you ever heard that Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach?”

“Yes, sir, when the feet of the army is all right,” I answered.

“Quite true,” he replied. “No doubt
you’ve sprained one of yours; just wash it
well in warm water, rub it well, and have a
day or two resting. That will leave you all right. Your boots are good?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They don’t pinch or—what’s wrong with
you?” He was speaking to the next man.

[pg 33]

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Don’t know? You don’t know why
you’re here. What brought you here?”

“Rheumatic pains, I think, sir,” was the
answer. “Last night I ‘ad an orful night.
Couldn’t sleep. I think it was the wet as
done it. Lyin’ out on the grass last field day—”

“How many times have you been here before?”

“Well, sir, the last time was when—”

“How many times?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Was it rheumatic pains last time?”

“No sir, it was jaw-ache—toothache, I mean.”

“I’ll put you on light duties for the day,”
said the M.O. And the rheumatic one and I went out together.

“That’s wot they do to a man that’s sick,”
said the rheumatic one when we got outside.
“Me that couldn’t sleep last night, and now
it’s light duties. I know what light duties
are. You are to go into the orderly room
and wash all the dishes: then you go and
run messages, then you ‘old the orficer’s
horse and then maybe when you’re worryin’
[pg 34]
your own bit of grub they come and bundle
you out to sweep up the orficers’ mess, or run
an errand for the ‘ead cook and bottle-washer. Light duties ain’t arf a job. I’m
blowed if marchin’ in full kit ain’t ten times
better, and I’m going to grease to the battalion parade.”

Fifteen minutes later I met him leaving
his billet, his haversack on the wrong side,
his cartridge pouches open, the bolt of his
gun unfastened; his whole general appearance
was a discredit to his battalion and a
disgrace to the Army. I helped to make
him presentable as he bellowed his woes into
my ear. “No bloomin’ grub this mornin’,”
he said. “Left my breakfast till I’d come
back, and ‘aven’t no time for it now. Anyway
I’m going out on the march; no light
duties for me. I know what they are.”
He was still protesting against the hardships
of things as he swung out of sight round the
corner of the street. Afterwards I heard that
he got three days C.B. for disobeying the orders of the M.O.

Save for minor ailments and accident, my
battalion is practically immune from sickness; colds come and go as a matter of
[pg 35]
course, sprains and cuts claim momentary
attention, but otherwise the health of the
battalion is perfect. “We’re too healthy
to be out of the trenches,” a company
humorist has remarked, and the company and battalion agrees with him.

[pg 36]