June – July 1917

The Germans have now begun bombing London – and on June 13th, 162 were left dead and 432 injured. This war has gone on so long and yet seems so far from being over.

I’ve had another letter from Jo. They had their annual fete at Ropsley rectory where her brother Edmund is vicar.

“Lots of people came. Mother didn’t come out into the garden at all, but Dorothy went upstairs and had tea with her and they chatted. So mother felt well enough later to come down to the drawing room after tea. 

"Rode to Grantham last week and had a tooth stopped. Grand day. Photo taken 2s 6d, lunch 4d, paper ½d, sweets 5d, towards Edmund’s baccy 1d. Dorothy came later to visit and for tea and found me lying in the hammock under the old cherry tree.”

The poor Royals of Russia were shot to death. On July 17th, Tsar Nicholas II, 49, Tsarina Alexandra, 45, and their children the Grand Duchesses Olga, 22, Tatiana, 20, Maria, 18, and Anastasia, 16, and their brother Tsarevich Alexei, 13, were murdered. What an awful thing to have happen. Those poor children had done nothing wrong except to be born royal. The youngest was the age of my Rebecca. What is this world coming to? The Russian revolution is in full swing, which makes the war situation even more complicated than it was before. May God have mercy on their poor souls. They didn’t deserve this.

John often mentions the army food when he writes, and of course Peter talks of food too. Here is an article that I found in the paper on the subject.

“A total of over 2,000,000 tons of food has been sent from Britain to the soldiers fighting in France and Belgium so far in the war.  The British Army have 300,000 field workers to cook and supply the food.

At the beginning of the war British soldiers were given 10 ounces of meat and 8 ounces of vegetables a day. As the size of the army grew and the German blockade became more effective, the army could not maintain these rations and by 1916 this had been cut to 6 ounces of meat a day.

Later troops not in the front-line only received meat on nine out of every thirty days. The daily bread ration has now also been cut. The British Army attempts to give the soldiers the 3,574 calories a day that dieticians said they need. However, others argued that soldiers during wartime need much more than this.

Soldiers in the Western Front are very critical of the quantity and the quality of food they receive. The bulk of their diet in the trenches is bully beef (caned corned beef), bread and biscuits. By the winter of 1916 flour was in such short supply that bread was being made with dried ground turnips. The main food after that was a pea-soup with a few lumps of horsemeat. Kitchen staff became more and more dependent on local vegetables and also had to use weeds such as nettles in soups and stews.

The battalion’s kitchen staff had just two large vats, in which everything was prepared. As a result, everything the men ate tasted of something else. For example, soldiers often complained that their tea tasted of vegetables. Providing fresh food was also very difficult. It takes up to eight days before bread reaches the frontline and so it is invariably stale. So also are the biscuits and the soldiers attempt to solve this problem by breaking them up, adding potatoes, onions, sultanas or whatever was available, and boiling the mixture up in a sandbag. (I wonder what that is.)

The catering staff puts the food in dixies (cooking pots), petrol cans or old jam jars and carries it up the communication trenches in straw-lined boxes. By the time the food reaches the front-line it is always cold. Eventually the army moved the field kitchens closer to the front-line but they have not been able to get close enough to provide regular hot food for the men.

Sometimes a small group of soldiers manages to buy a small primus stove between them. When they can obtain the fuel, which is always in short supply, they can heat their food and brew some tea.

Food is often supplied in cans. Maconochie contains sliced turnips and carrots in a thin soup. As one soldier says, “Warmed in the tin, Maconochie is edible; cold it is a man killer.”

The British Army  tried to hide this food shortage from the enemy. However, when they announced that British soldiers were being supplied with two hot meals a day, they received over 200,000 letters from angry soldiers pointing out the truth of the situation. Men claimed that although the officers are well-fed the men in the trenches are being treated appallingly.

Food supply is a major problem when soldiers advance into enemy territory. All men carry emergency food called iron rations. This is a can of bully beef, a few biscuits and a sealed tin of tea and sugar. These iron rations can only be opened with the permission of an officer. This food does not last very long and if the kitchen staff are unable to provide food to the soldiers they might be forced through hunger, to retreat from land they recently won from the enemy.”

We had a small party for Beth’s seventh birthday. I can’t believe that it has been over two years since she and her father first arrived in our church. And on the other hand, it seems as if Beth has been a part of our family forever.

There were nine little boys and girls from her class who came to the party, and we played the usual children’s games – pin the tail on the donkey, blind man’s bluff, and some simple charades. And as the day was fine, they played some chasing around games in the garden to let them work off some of their excitement.

I saved up my sugar ration for months to be able to make her a cake, which I decorated to look like a face, with coloured cocoanut hair and shaped candied fruit that I had saved from before the war for the features.

Her father sent her a beautiful necklace of seashells – another of the crafts from the camp in the Isle of Man. I bought her a small bicycle. Most of her toys have been Rebecca's old things, and this seemed a suitable present to have first hand. She was pleased, and although she will need quite a lot of practice to get balanced properly, Rebecca is a very patient and understanding teacher.