SAVES THE DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 310, 31 December 1940, Page 5

SAVES THE DAY.

"BULLY ,, AND BISCUITS SNACKS IN THE DESERT. ——^— (Prom the Official War Correspondent with the I New Zealand Forces In the Middle East Mr. Robin T. Miller.) EGYPT, December 6. With appetites waxing strong on exercise and open air, bully beef and biscuit* have won new respect In the eyes of soldiers of the New Zealanc Expeditionary Forces in the MiddU East. The pack which the infantrymai. elings across his shoulders when he moves away from camp for a day or more almost invariably has a tin of meat and a packet of "hard tack" stowed away in it, while rare is thej transport driver who cannot produce a quick meal from under his driving seat. If you heard them mentioned as you sat before a hot dinner in s. comfortable mess, "bully and biscuits" would have an uninspiring eound, but hunger lends them a touch of magic. You may be out with a battalion at exercises, waiting in the fading daylight and the growing dullness ' while an ad\ - ance partv goes ahead to select a bivouac area. You begin to think how long ago it was that the last meal halt was made, and you look hopefully into the dusk for the glow of flame that will mean that the cooks have at last set up their boilers. Then someone remembers his tin of bully, someone else produces the biscuits, and in two minutes a hefty sandwich slides off a bayonet into your hands. Cold chicken could hardly taste better. Scratch meals like this are a ehara-;-| teristic of army manoeuvres. Sometim<\*] the '"bush telegraph" passes back the news that the halt will be a fairly long] one, and hot tea appears as if out of thin-aic There is always a primus stove ajMMit or an heater-ihat o» simply a tkr filled with pc£aaieaakßd' a 6and« ' «I—-— ~~~

Drivers are partieula-ly resourceful when heating is needed—they can improve a tin of beans., for instance, by leaving it on the exhaust manifold of a truck engine for the last 20 minutes or so of the journey. Every soldier finds himself becoming adept at preparing meak with a minimum of facilities. Yet the army cook, who works miracles where the ordinary soldier only works wonders, could never be threatened with extinction. Bully beef and biscuits may have saved the day on that bleak afternoon, but they become less than a memory when the soldier takes his place in the queue an hour later and sees roast beef, potatoes, beans and gravy, brought out from, camp eight miles away and heated up on the spot, heaped into his mess tin-