ARMY FOOD

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 114, 16 May 1942, Page 6

ARMY FOOD

MORE IN PRAISE

DOES COOK RUIN IT?

(By the CHIEF REPORTER.) (No. XIII.)

Monday. — Breakfast: Porridge, curried chops, bread and butter, tea and coffee. Lunch: Dry rations, scones, lettuce, fruit, tea. Dinner: Roast beef, potatoes, cabbage, steamed pudding, tea.

Tuesday. — Breakfast: Porridge, braised steak, onions, bread and butter, tea and coffee. Lunch: Dry rations, fruit, tea. Dinner: Steak and kidney pie, baked pumpkin, mashed potatoes, creamed sago custard, bread and butter, tea.

Is there anything wrong with that?

For "dry rations'' read "bread, jam, cheese, honey." Now, please understand that the above is the record of a Reserve Motor Transport section's menus out on bivouac! Sitting on the hillside, I copied it out of the head cook's notebook.

If they can do as well as that, when out "roughing it," what are the possibilities in an established camp? These men had been sent out to live on the country for 2/6 per day. From a farmer they bought two sheep, for 15/ a head. A married soldier, who had been a salesman in an Auckland wholesale house, killed and dressed the sheep. Then he traded some of the mutton for eggs. Down on the beach his cobbers scooped up pipis for soup. On three lines another soldier caught fifty snapper. While I was being told all this by the cook, he was filling a dreh with sliced onions, carrots, parsley, and swedes. Beautiful pastel shades. A dish as lovely as any full-colour American advertisement.

RoaHting Pork In an outdoor infantry mess (P.W.D. are building fast!), cheerful boys at lunch were having soup, bread, butter, cheese, jam, honey and tea. Our "Q" major assured me it was what the army call soup, but it looked more like a stew. Cooks were already preparing the evening dinner. There were appetising roasts sizzling in the oven. Along the road we had lunch with the lieutenantcolonel and his battalion headquarters officers. An exactly similar lunch to that of the men—except that the cook had fixed for us some delicious plates of oyster fritters! A lieutenant whispered that this was "a treat for you visitors," as normally, they would have lunched off rations.

To-day army food is served hot. Camp-cookers, known to soldiers as hot-boxes, have been issued to units everywhere. They must have been manufactured by the thousand, and they are a godsend to the soldier. Stew, potatoes, porridge, sago, vegetables, roast meat—everything, when cooked, or almost cookcd, is popped into hot-boxes. Constructed on the thermos principle, with a sort of dixie, holding about eight gallons, fitting snugly into an airtight outer dixie, they keep food hot for 24 hours or more.

Not only do the hot-boxes retain heat and so keep the food at a high temperature—food continues to cook

in them. Thus, porridge or sago is left only a little time on the stove before being poured into the hot-box.

About Bad Cooks

Yesterday I mentioned that I had been threatened with violence for daring to write in praise of army food. I promised to use armourpiercing ammunition in reply to my critics. Here it is:

The best food obtainable in New Zealand is bought for the army and supplied fcr consumption by all ranks. As I stated in my article on army food, earlier in the series, officers and men live on exactly similar rations. If there is anything wrong with the food it can only be that bad cooks have ruined it.

That there are some devastatingly bad or indifferent cooks I don't doubt. I can only say that cn my tour of the Northern Military District I didn't find any, or hear of any. However, I have since been told of cooks in small, remote camps who were either not cooks at all, or who were dirty, lazy and incompetent. That such men have been suffered must have been the fault of young officers who didn't know their job.

Schools for Cooks To-day the army has schools for cooks. I'm assured that, having been through the full course, any normal man should be able to cook more than satisfactorily. On the tour I spoke to several cookhouse soldiers, and they all said they had been through a course of two cr three days, in one of the big Expeditionary Force mobilisation camps. Unfortunately I did not encounter anyone who had been through the full course of army cockery, which is supposed to be so comprehensive that it teaches a man how to kill and dress.

Men have told me that some of the best army food they have eaten was served on manoeuvres, where the cooking was done cn two iron bars let into the ground. On our tour I found big oil-burning ovens in most kitchens. Efficient things. Five-unit petrol burning stoves are also popular. Even units out on bivouac have them. In some camps Aldershct ovens were in use. Great roasts of pork sizzled deliciously. These ovens had been improvised. Discarded oil drums, bricks taken at dead of night from some tumbled ruin, and a pinch of cement from goodness knows where, had gone to their making.

For the edification cf all those whose temperatures rose sharply in indignation when they read of liberal helpings of cream in the men's messes,- may I say that this was no exaggeration? Were I permitted, I should here set down the name and address of the unit. Sufficient that it was in a splendidly conducted Field Ambulance camp, where the canteen shows a good profit.

A Pound of Meat Daily I repent that the men cannct eat the full ration of food, and that consistent under-drawing of the scale is a marked feature of Army Service Corps returns. 1 have been shown those returns, not only for individual camps, but for the whole of the military district, and I am convinced. The army is allowed 2/3 per man per day, but the men consume less than 1/10 worth. The full 2/3 worth is there if they want it. Could you eat one pound of meat every day of the year?

Let's have a peep (in-small type) atr the army ration scale:— Bread (of cabin "biscuit), 16oz; flour, lioz; baking powder, 31b per 1001b of flour; fresh meat, with bone 240z, or boned 16oz, or preserved meat, l€oz; sausages, twice weekly (in lieu Boz meat with bone), 8oz; bacon (twice weekly in lieu lOoz meat with bone), soz; fresh or smoked fish (in lieu Boz meat with bone), Soz; tinned fish, 4oz; cheese, loz daily; jam or honey, 2oz; milk, fresh, 1 1-3 pints, or 4oz condensed or 3oz dried; oatmeal or cereal, loz; onions, 2oz; fresh vegetables, 12oz, or tinned 4oz, dried 3oz; old potatoes, 16oz daily, or new l2oz; sugar, 3oz; tea, Joz; butter, 3oz; fresh fruit Boz, or dried loz, or tinned 4oz; llmejulce, loz; salt (twice weekly), ljoz; rice, lioz; pickles or sauce (twice weekly), ISoz; margarine (cooking). Ioz; coffee or cocoa (once weekly), loz; currants, sultanas or raisins (once weekly), lioz; treacle or syrup (once weekly), loz; cornflour, loz; eggs, 2oz; vinegar, 2oz.

Just a Grumble

There are other items—pepper, curry powder, mustard, cream of tartar, carbonate of soda, custard powder, essences, jellies, lemon peel, spice . . . but catalogues are dull reading. I repeat that New Zealand's Army has a great and abiding preoccupation with food. The men seem to talk of nothing else—unless it be beer, of which I saw precious little, indeed none at all, out in the buhai. Food is the New Zealand soldier's principal excuse for grumbling, and, as healthy grumbling is the soldier's birthright, the food gets a raw deal. But, take my word for it, next time you hear a soldier condemning the tucker, be assured that he is speaking of choice food ruined by lazy, indifferent or bad cooks.

And now, I suppose, I'll have the hard-working, conscientious cooks on my trail, with a carving knife!

(Series Concluded.)