"Food Will Win the War": Food in the Military During WWI

Meat was one of the most important foods to the caloric intake of troops. American soldiers were allocated 1 ¼ lbs. of meat daily, the Germans and British received 1 lb., and the French received just less than a pound. Specialty meat like turkey could be served on Thanksgiving and Christmas, if possible. [9] Vegetables were the second most important source of nutrition in ration planning. German men received over a pound of vegetables a day, the British a little over a half pound, the French had no fixed official amount, and Americans were given 1 ¼ lbs. of potatoes to work with. [10] These numbers, sadly, are only in theory. Actual rationing ranged greatly from location to location, month to month, and sometimes day to day.

In the United States, the Office of Quartermaster was the official avenue through which troops were provided food. They were developed to consolidate food production and purchasing for the military [11]. The Quartermaster controlled many different types of food in every stage of production including flour, sugar, canned vegetables, dehydrated fruits, salmon, sardines, canned milk, and fresh beef. [12] The Quartermaster Corps requested certain foods from the Food Administration purchase list and the quantity which they needed. The Food Administration would divvy up the production of these items between different producers and their capacities before it was shipped to a general supply depot where prices were decided on by the Food Purchase board. The Quartermaster Corps purchased these rations from the general supply depots nearby army posts to lessen the shipping distance and to minimize the effect that purchasing food in such quantities would have on civilian prices for these goods [13]. They also published many manuals, like the 1910 Manual for the Subsistence Department of the U.S. Army. These manuals contained guidelines on ways to select the best ration items for quality and price, as well as the proper way to purchase these items and record ration values. [14]

The Quartermaster Corps established depots for storing the different goods they procured for the military after they purchased them. There were three main types of depots. The first of which were base depots, in which they received the initial products to unload them as fast as possible and allow the ships to go back for more shipments right away. The second type of depot was closer to the front lines. They were called intermediary depots and served as the resting point for goods between the base depots and their final destination, advanced section depots. The advanced section depots were located nearest to the front lines where the supplies would be used by troops. [15]

The French and British armies had another way of providing food to their troops, through planting vegetable gardens near more permanent types of camps close to the front line. These camps usually were used for training or hospitals, since they were moved less frequently than the lines themselves and allowed for military members to cultivate and harvest their small gardens more frequently and in general take better care of them. This system was so successful that the United States Quartermaster Corps copied it and created their own Gardens Bureau to oversee the distribution of seeds and plants for these gardens. [16] For the U.S. Army, the Quartermaster Corps only provided about 40% of all the food that the military consumed. [17]

The establishment of military training schools for cooks and bakers was one of the most necessary measures for the U.S. Army and their plans to provide the American Expeditionary Force with food overseas. In 1905 the first school for bakers and cooks was established at Fort Riley, following ration problems from the Spanish American War. This was significant because they provided men with the training and resources to cook for groups of anywhere from 20-100 men. [18] The Regular Army and National Guard already had their own mess organizations, but the newly formed National Army was desperately in need of their own cooks now that they had expanded so much. These training schools filled that void. [19] Army cooks were able to use newly developed improvements to the classic rolling kitchen, like W.A. Dorsley’s compact oil-burners that could be used within these kitchens to cook more efficiently for the men. [20] The rolling kitchens were commonly known as “Liberty Kitchens” in the U.S. and were either horse-drawn or vehicle-drawn during World War One. [21] Army bakers were given technology like continuous ovens and intermittent ovens to bake bread for the military in a variety of conditions. [22]

Specially trained cooks and bakers were not the only ones who were expected to be able to provide food for soldiers though, as sometimes nurses were called on to abandon their current medical duties to provide their patients with food. “A well-fed patient has many times the chance of recovery than the wounded soldier who is served with ill-prepared food or has an insufficient diet.” [23] Since women were part of the domestic sphere, which included caring for others and cooking it was thought that this was no issue, but as the war progressed it was made clear nurses were far more valuable to the military when able to focus completely on their jobs of providing health and healing. [24]

Rationing and Reality

The realities of rationing in every military power were far less ideal than their theoretical plans that they had begun the war with. Facts and figures could only predict so much and the reality of the situation was that the military needed to figure out ways to get more food to their men more efficiently. Shipping was one of the most difficult problems to overcome. None of the powers had enough ships, especially the Americans, to ship the rations they needed. The AEF relied heavily on food purchased in Europe initially when they arrived in 1917. [25] To free up space on ships new food shipping technology was introduced, including de-boning meat and dehydrating vegetables. These techniques took up less space than previous methods of packing. [26] De-boned beef came in three varieties of 100 lbs. cubes including tenderloins, sirloins, butts, top rinds, and shoulder steaks; prime ribs, rumps, and bottom chucks for roasts; and flanks, plates, blades, necks, shanks, and trimmings for stews. This made meat easier to prep for field cooks as well, since they no longer had to spend as much time prepping and de-boning the meat. [27] Dehydrating vegetables, the creation of soluble coffee, and the expansion of refrigeration were all other technologies that further aided the solution to the shipping problem and became even more common after the war ended. [28]

Not all issues were solved by this new technology. Some were more complicated, like the fact that even before the war began Britain imported most of the food they consumed and the German U-boat attacks and blockades made it even more difficult to import food into the country during wartime. [29] Not to mention with all the men gone to fight in the war there were constant labor shortages in industries where Britain was able to produce their own food. [30] Germans suffered some of the worst food shortages throughout the war because of the scale and scope of the Allied blockade. [31] The French had fewer issues with shortages than they did with damage to their supply and distribution system throughout the war. In 1915 an inspection found that over half of France’s 300,000 field kitchens were completely unserviceable. [32]

Due to issues like these men often got far less than the “official” ration, and as the war went on even less due to supply/distribution difficulties. [33] What food the men of the military did have in the war was usually shared quite freely between soldiers and officers. Comradery was a contributing factor, but it was also a burden to carry extra food around with them, especially food that was sent in care packages. [34] Travel troops that were not in distance of a cooking facility had a diet of bread, canned corn beef or corned beef hash, baked beans, canned tomatoes and roasted or ground coffee. If coffee was unavailable men were given twenty-one cents a day to purchase liquid coffee. [35] When troops were near serviceable kitchens, they received more elaborate meals like chipped beef on toast (commonly known as SOS among the troops) and had access to purchasing extras like candy at canteens. Candy was eventually a part of official overseas rations for U.S. troops in December of 1918. [36]

Food provided to the American draftee in training were some of the most complete meals that the soldiers would receive before going into battle. The menu from Summer of 1917 at Fort Riley gives an excellent example of a typical daily ration for the trainees:

Breakfast- Cantaloupes, corn flakes, sugar and milk, fried liver and bacon, fried onions, toast, bread, and coffee

Dinner- Beef à la mode, boiled potatoes, creamed cauliflower, pickles, tapioca pudding, vanilla [sic] sauce, bread, and iced tea

Supper- Chili con carne, hot biscuits, stewed peaches, and iced tea [37]

Pork and beans were a more common “prepared” meal in a can that troops would receive once deployed, which they could warm up or eat cold. It was similar to today’s baked beans, made with haricot beans and pork fat. [38]

Soft and hard breads were also a staple of all militaries. Bakers had the ability to bake both soft and hard breads, but as the war went on hard breads became more common because it was less prone to damage while transporting it, though it did take longer to bake because of how much denser it was. [39] During the war, one of the best field bakeries output was from a U.S. bakery company. They baked 12,096 lbs. of field bread a day at their peak. [40] The United States troops had a bakery company of around 61 personnel (which would be reduced to 48 during peacetime) for every division of men and used the Manual for Army Bakers for their recipes. [41] Hard breads were also known as “field bread” or “army biscuits” depending on the way they were produced, packaged, and consumed. The army biscuit of the Royal Artillery was “so hard you had to put them on a firm surface and smash them with a stone or something” according to one private. [42] Soldiers came up with many different methods to serve the biscuits including smashing them to a pulp and adding sultanas to make a mushy substance that they would then boil in a sandbag. When it was finished each man would take a sawed-off piece, sandbag still intact. [43]

World War One also saw the development and refinement of the emergency ration. Sometimes these were called iron rations [44] or Armour Emergency Rations, named after the company that produced them. [45] These rations were meant to be food that the troops could fall back on in case of an emergency where other food was not accessible or they were cut off from their supply lines. These products weren’t the most appetizing and it was a general rule that soldiers could not consume their emergency rations without officer permission. [46] European iron rations consisted of a tin of bully beef, tea and sugar, a few biscuits, and a wedge of moldy cheese. [47] American Armour Emergency Rations were just as bad. They consisted of three cakes made of parched wheat and powdered beef and three cakes made from chocolate and sugar. The beef cakes could be eaten dry or boiled in three pints of water for soup, and one pint of water for a porridge substance, or even sliced and fried up. The chocolate cakes were either eaten dry like candy or made into a drink by adding it to hot water. [48]

Substitution during the war was boiled down to a form of art, so to speak. Soldiers often were unable to get the original foods that their rations were supposed to consist of, so the military came up with lists of foods that could be used instead to substitute the original products. Soft bread made from flour often had to be substituted with hard bread or 50/50 bread, fresh meat with canned meat or pickled fish, dried fish, or canned fish, fresh vegetables with desiccated vegetables, and fruit was to be 30% prunes when possible. [49] The Turnip Winter of 1916-1917 was one of the most notable examples of army substitutions. Due to food shortages, the German army was forced to eat turnips in nearly everything, which was commonly thought of as animal fodder or face starvation. They ate bread made of ground turnips and sawdust with mashed turnip paste on top for flavor. They also resorted to horse meat stew with nettles, commonly called “barbed wire entanglements” as their vegetable source. [50] The Germans, also due to shortages, reduced their meat ration from twelve ounces to six ounces over the course of the war, eventually only consuming meat about nine days out of the month. [51]