A soldier is at liberty to cook his own rations by himself, but as a rule
we all chum in together. We may all take a hand in the cooking, or we may
appoint a section cook for a day or for a week, according to his especial
facility.
After the rum ration we receive some tea and sugar, lots of bully beef and
biscuits. The bully beef is corned beef and has its origin, mysterious to
us, in Chicago, Illinois, or so we believe. It is quite good. But you can
get too much of a good thing once too often. So sometimes we eat it, and
sometimes we use the unopened tins as bricks and line the trenches with
them. Good solid bricks, too! We get soup powders and yet more soup
powders. We get cheese that is not cream cheese, and we get a slice of raw
bacon. Often we eat the bacon at once, sometimes we save it up to have a
"good feed" at one time. One can plan one's own menu just as fancy
dictates.
Then we get jam. The inevitable, haunting, horrific "plum and apple." This
is made by Ticklers', Limited, of London, England, and after the tins are
empty we use them to manufacture hand grenades. In those days our supply of
hand bombs was like our supply of shells, problematic to say the least.
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