Milking under fire

The next few posts of the blog are going to look at the soldiers' relationship with food and drink.  The men came up with interesting/ingenious ideas born out of the boredom of eating the same things day in, day out, and sometimes sheer desperation.

D/DLI 7/424/2(30) Photograph of orange sellers with the soldiers of 6^th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry shortly after their arrival in France, taken by Captain PHB Lyon [1915]

In our collections we have a series of letters that Major John English, 9^th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry wrote to his wife in May 1915 (The Second Battle of Ypres - 9th Battalion) In the following extracts he muses on food and the lack of access to anything to drink.

6 May 1915

“…I am lying on a blanket in a beautiful green grass field all clothed with dandelion and a herd of cows grazing all round I am sitting with the shade of a tree with chocolate to eat, papers to read & nothing to do. This is the strenuous life I like and if you had only been here. We are always rushing for something to drink. I never drink their water as I am suspicious of it, now just at this moment a man & his wife have come into the field shouting oranges. What luck & what yells of delight. I must resume after having eaten four …” (D/DLI 7/1151/7)

  

15 May 1915

“I got the chocolate & cake dear heart & never tasted either as an attack was imminent & we had orders to move down the trenches to fill up a gap which did not exist. I went down to the left to get a move on & was away some time ordering & counter ordering, it was raining hard all the time & I had no coat or rather discarded it. I got wet through.  We had to move back to the same positions & when I got back I found our dugout full of men & absolutely nothing left, all the food & cakes & other delicacies which we had had been taken. Send me some more chocolate like that dearie & another cake, also 3 boxes of sardines.” (D/DLI 7/1151/14)

D/DLI 2/8/62(5) Soldiers receiving rations from a field kitchen at Ancre, France, October 1916

20 May 1915

“There is a goat just outside my hut eating a newspaper and one of the men is chasing it, unfortunately it does not give milk.  I told you of the herd of cows near the trenches, and it was quite a common sight to see men milking the cows under shell fire.” (D/DLI 7/1151/19)

 

21 May 1915

“We are going to have chicken, pigeons, and mutton all boiled up together today with rice and compressed vegetables, so that ought to make a nice stew.  Water is the thing we want more than anything, it is so scarce.  The farms around now refuse to give it to us and they charge exorbitantly for everything we buy.” (D/DLI 7/1151/20)