BULLY BEEF AND BISCUITS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 82, 31 December 1940, Page 5

BULLY BEEF AND BISCUITS

Keenly Sought By Troops (From the Official War Correspondent with rhe X.Z.E.F. in Egypt.) EGYPT. Oeceinber G. With appetites waxing strong on exercise and open air, bully beef and biscuits have won new respect in the eyes of soldiers of the N.Z.E.F. in the Middle East. The pack which the infantryman slings across his shoulders when he moves away from eamp for a day or more almost invariably has a tin of meat and a packer of “hard tack” stowed away in it*. while rare is the transport driver "ho cannot produce a quick meal from under his driving seat If you heard them mentioned as you

I sat before a hot dinner in a comfort- | able mess, "bully and biscuits” would i have an uninspiring sound, but hunger 1 lends I hem a touch of magic. You may : lie out. with a battalion at exercises, i waiting in the fading daylight and the , growing chilliness while an advance I party goes ahead i.> select a bivouac i 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 I mean that (he 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 oft a bayonet into your hands. Cold chicken could hardly taste better. Scratch meals like this are a characteristic of army manoeuvres. Sometimes the "bush telegraph” passes back the news that the halt will be a fairly long one, and hot tea appears as if out

j of thin air. There is always a primus •stove about somewhere, or an ingenious heater I bat. is simply a tin filled with petrol-soaked sand. Drivers are particularly 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 I lie last 20 minutes or so of the journey. Every soldier finds himself becoming . quite adept at preparing meals with a I 'minimum of facilities. Yet the army cook, who works miracles where the ordinary soldier only works wonders, could never be threatened with extinction. Your bully ai.d biscuits may have saved the day on that bleak afternoon, but they become less (han a memory when you take your place in the queue an hour later and see roast beef, potai toes, beans and gravy, brought out from camp eight miles away and heated up I on the spot, heaped into your mess tin.