#rations

that it must be carefully rationed."

Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin (attributed).

The Inquiry

As always, I intended for this to be short but then I sat here for hours infodumping so now it’s a rations crash course. Example I used here is from the Brits, so I highly recommend the book Feeding Tommy: battlefield recipes from the First World War by Andrew Robertshaw which has an incredibly detailed wealth of information on food, cooking, and rations!

This is one of those questions with some slightly conflicting info between undated sources on regulation updates and conflicting firsthand accounts, mostly because as always what the army regulations say is supposed to happen and what actually happens are usually two different things. Some sources and stories give an inconsistent list of foods and quantities as well as conflicting information on the prevalence of shortages and when and what was issued at any given time as missing rations and short-lived ingredient substitutions were frequent. Like at one point baked beans were issued? But they had to stop because men were just? Swallowing them whole without chewing?? I’ll explain more on how rations work as well because these lists of foods make it sound as if all soldiers regardless of position are going to the Ration Station Van at 0900 and getting a steak and a potato when this is not true.

For those who don’t know, rations aren’t just tins of beef, historically it tends to refer to any food the military issues you, so it doesn’t always exclusively mean Army Issued Trench Depression Biscuit. It can also collectively refer to things like the giant hot pots of soup that (tried to) meet dietary requirements made by an army cook that was then dished out say in the reserve trenches or at a field camp. I think the way sources are worded confuses people that rations are only “frontline trench food” you keep in a box and whip out like a Sim from your arse when you’re hungry.

For Britain at least, relatively only half of the army was in the infantry, and even the infantry was not permanently posted to the trenches. You were generally on the frontline (those ones you see in the movies with all the miserable chaps and guns over the parapet) for only on average 5-7 days at a time before being moved back to slightly less dangerous support trenches and then reserve trenches, both for roughly 5 days at a time. You also spent time being billeted in villages and towns, at established military bases with permanent camps, temporary field camps, etc. which also changed your “rations”, and this is just for men in the field. Admin and transport and other roles are going to have slightly different food.

I’m speaking from the British perspective as an example, but many countries had similar systems. Typically, there were 3 clear types of issued rations on the Western Front:

field rations, trench rations, and iron rations.

These changed over the duration of the war, but you can expect most individually issued ingredients remained relatively the same even if they changed in weight, quality, or had situational substitutions. They aimed to give men in combat roles about 4,000 calories a day, give or take 500.

Contrary to what it seems, you also didn’t always live purely off this issued ingredient list to make your own meals as some “rations” were meals provided for you. There were army cooks who produced hot meals like soups and meat dishes in the field, and before things like the NAAFI, you also had canteens which supplied hot food, drinks, and other goods. You did also receive money to buy extra ingredients of your own. In town or upon passing markets or vendors when it was permissible to do so, you could purchase things like sauces, sweets, seasonings, eggs, produce, cakes, and other food. Whether or not they kept is another story, but you weren’t barred from buying them. Scrounging ingredients was incredibly commonplace too, whether it was passing an abounded garden of vegetables, a chicken coop, or orchard, finding discarded crates of goods, or even, on one account I read, finding pigeons in the rafters of an empty house.

While there were numerous ways to customise your meals, the field ration is the mainstay. One source gives an idea of the difference between early war and late war field rations:

These were intended to be issued daily to the men where applicable from the general scheme of supply where ingredients were sent out to divisions via train or lorry to the stock kept by a quartermaster to be distributed. You’ll be so happy to learn that they apparently did not really always think it important to wrap tea, cheese, and meat individually when transported so it all went loose into a sandbag and in wet weather created a Yummy Surprise to find upon opening :)

There are of course many accounts to doubt whether or not adherence to these exact ingredients being issued was abided by consistently and entirely, as many men complained of smaller amounts of things like meat and bread were given over time, with many additional accounts of being given different versions of these items or poor substitutions for the duration of the war.

Jam for instance had no regulation flavour or set supplier, but you might hear reference in old songs to “Tickler’s Marmalade” and a frustration with “plum and apple jam”. Tickler was one popular jam supplier the army used, particularly buying their plum and apple flavour as those fruits were more readily available as opposed to strawberries, much to the dismay of men who eventually grew tired of plum and apple rations. At any rate, the tins came in handy at least as they could be turned into bombs! (Below, left).

Also, the ingredients weren’t always as nice as they sounded. Bread was often quite difficult to keep, particularly in the trenches were it went off or grew stale quickly. Some men report rarely having received bread rations but rather just a biscuit ration, and we’re not talking custard creams. The biscuits were flavourless, rock solid, and needed to be soaked in water to rehydrate lest you break your teeth. Another popular substitution in the meat ration was trading things like fresh beef for tinned beef, which was again easier to transport and keep fresh, but tasted terrible by comparison. There have been numerous animals it was said to have tasted like, none of which are a cow. The bacon, while it usually showed up, was reportedly really fatty.

I would say the one with the most inconsistent information is the trench rations, because of the circumstantial logistics of getting food to the trenches, local availability of food, and differences in the reserve/support trenches and frontline trenches in their separate amenities to cook and keep certain ingredients from spoiling with the frontline trenches being the most difficult to supply fresh rations to (and cook in). A trench ration on paper is usually called a modified field ration, which is shorthand for “it’s smaller than your field ration and it’s whatever the fuck we decide to give you”. Again, many men used leftover items from usual field rations or scrounged or bought ingredients while out of the line to bulk up their meals or make them more edible. One source from 1917 lists this trench ration as:

Now, obviously this is not a lot of ingredients, but you didn’t always use all of this per day. While you might use the bacon, tea, and sugar for your breakfast, you might have received stew, albeit a very cold one, sent up the line from an army kitchen near the reserves for your lunch or dinner, so maybe you had some extra bread you didn’t use to make a stew yourself. And again, you’re not in frontline, support, and reserve trenches collectively for any more than usually a couple of weeks, so you didn’t have too long to endure it, especially since you weren’t in the trenches every month.

As said before, trench rations like field rations were also subject to these low quality substitutions, issues, or tiresome flavours. Especially in the frontline trenches were conditions made it very difficult to keep ingredients and cook, bread was often only hard biscuits, beef was often tinned, and vegetables were often dried. A beloved (hated) common trench item was Maconochie tinned stew (depicted in the Ration title) which was a sad mush of mostly turnips and meat usually topped with a weird film of goo *chef kiss*.

There’s also not a lot you can make with just meat, salt, and bread. Like in the field not in trenches, many soldiers would search for extra ingredients that would keep when coming into the trenches. If you were lucky, sometimes parties sent out for any number of reasons might’ve come back with root vegetables, you might’ve found some carrots while taking a rest from a march, or bought some OXO cubes while in town. One staple many British enlisted men opted for was HP sauce, which would basically be added to any abysmal concoction to mask the depressing taste. If you were responsible for a meal, you cooked with your mess tins you carried in a cover outside your pack over a tiny fire or Tommy Cooker which you kept in your pack. A suggestion for a meal on rations + extra ingredients found or bought by an enlisted man might be a scrounged carrot, onion, and issued fresh beef cut up with a jack knife, seasoned with a little salt and HP, cooked in your little tommy tin over a tiny fire that was tucked away in a cubby of a dirt trench wall. Families could also send food to the trenches like chocolates and biscuits, but maybe occasionally something called a “trench cake” which was basically just a hardy chocolate cake with sultanas which obviously lost most of the moisture it originally possessed in the mail. These had to be eaten quickly as they did not keep long in the trenches, either because it would get hard as a rock or someone would steal it.

You also sometimes received a ration of rum, which was extremely small, and was kept in large jugs stamped S.R.D. which some proclaimed stood for “seldom reaches destination”, and that should tell you all you need to know about that!

If you were receiving hot rations from a field kitchen nearer the trenches or a smaller “kitchen” within trenches away from the frontlines, you mostly ate stews or something said to not be a stew (it is a stew) and even things like porridge (kinda like stew if you think about it). Really, there are references to meat dishes, boiled vegetables, curried things, rice dishes, and meat pies. The Germans I’m told, as always, had a lot more variety in their hot meals. Circumstances also found a way to make it end up nasty. Many accounts talk of eating horse due to lack of fresh beef. While this is mostly info for trench cooks, people may be surprised to hear there were places in or near reserve trenches to keep animals like chickens and grow vegetables in little gardens for more reliable ingredient access. If you’re interested in that and other niche ways nature/food managed to thrive in trenches, I highly recommend Where Poppies Blow: the British soldier, nature, the Grest War by John-Lewis Stempel.

The last one seems to be the most straight forward which is your Iron Ration. It is only to be eaten in an emergency and only by direct order from a superior. I feel like this is the one most people think of when they think of rations, but it is ironically the one least consumed. Iron Rations were called this because they were incased in a sealed tin which is pictured above on the far right of the picture with the example ration food. It consisted of:

Finally, I won’t get into the disparity between Other Ranks rations and Officers’ rations because that is an entirely different can of worms that involves a lot of classism but know there was a lot of scowling and a roast bird stolen from outside an officer’s tent by a group of privates and hidden in a bucket of water in their own tent whereupon they faked sleeping much to the NCO’s dismay when he stormed in adamant they were up to something. But I digress.

No Dog Biscuits Today, London 1939.

Customers waiting in line to buy coffee, October 28, 1942. They were sold one pound each. Similar lines formed at other stores where coffee was being sold on a rationed basis.