What Did Soldiers Eat in the Trenches of World War One?
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- Опубликовано: 27 апр 2024
- Life in the trenches during World War One would have been extremely tough. Long periods of boredom were mixed with brief moments of terror. The threat of death kept soldiers on edge, while poor living conditions and a lack of sleep wore away their health and stamina.
One element of trench life that was particularly grim, according to British soldiers, was the food. Fresh fruit, vegetables and meat were hard to come by so Tommy’s had to make do with tinned rations and hard biscuits.
In this video, Dan Snow experiences some of the food options that would have been on the menu for a soldier in the trenches of the ‘Great War’.
First, he tries trench stew or maconochie which was made with beef or gristle and sliced vegetables like turnips and carrots.
Next, he tastes some hardtack biscuits. These were very common during World War One because they didn’t go off and provided a substantial meal for soldiers, who badly needed the calories.
Dan washes his biscuits down with a mug of tea and a bite of chocolate. These familiar treats were used to boost soldiers morale and provide much-needed comfort to those on the front line.
Finally, Dan rolls a cigarette. Tobacco was a staple of army life and cigarettes were even used as currency within the British army. Dan also reveals that drugs were common in the trenches, with soldiers relying on substances to keep them going.
Do you think you could have got by on the diet of a soldier in the First World War? Let us know in the comments.
And keep your eyes peeled for the next episode of ‘History Feasts’ where Dan will be eating like a member of the Victorian working-class.
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The point that he has missed is that many soldiers, especially from the mining areas of the North, put on weight and even grew a couple of inches due to an improved diet. This was the first time in their lives that many of them had been able to eat three (usually) meals a day - many had existed on dripping on bread and tea and jam sandwiches - meat and vegetables, despite Mr Snows picky appetite, were luxuries - It's a cruel world.
And that was only 38,000 days ago...
Our taste buds have changed a lot over the years too.
@@bouse23 Beef dripping on bread must've been a rough chapter for British cuisine.
@Carter Jones lol I grew up eating that, not so long ago in the 80s during the recession then. Food prices keep going up here in the States. We may all be back in that boat again.
Given the price of corned beef nowadays, let alone other foods..that trench stew looks pretty appetising . It's certainly better, and better for you, than what I can afford to eat for a daily meal right now.
Friend, if you were cold and damp, tired and hungry, any food you could get hard or cold would have been a blessing.
Oh absolutely, if I was in the trenches I wouldn't care that much that the stew was cold, I'd savor it regardless.
Dan snow is the most British officer looking man on earth 😂
He’s also a top notch W⚓️
I would argue that King Charles is the most British officer looking man on earth, simply by virtue of the fact that he's literally the king.
@@cleverusername9369 not gonna lie. He's literally genuinely not virtually the actual king ding-a-ling to be totally honest
Just missing the moustache
His dad is even more so
I think the idea of these biscuits is the same as "hardtack": A way to make bread without moisture, so it wouldn't go rotten. Apparently soldiers and sailors used to smash them up and use the crumbs to thicken stew, or leave them in a drink to absorb all the moisture before eating - like you showed! Trying to eat these biscuits by themselves isn't ideal :D
I have read hardtack would often be infested with bugs. The men really had no other choice but to eat them anyway. It added protein to their diet too. The American Civil War they had canned meat that was often rancid as did many poor people at that time. Katsup was invented to mask the taste of spoiled meat.
And it is really stupid for "presenters" to keep pretending that the hardtack was eaten like crisps.
I tried them at a reenactment event here in Canada and yeah, their hard as rocks, had to smash it apart with the butt of my Lee Enfield and soak the residual bits in a cup of coffee lol
@@AnnaAnna-uc2ff Kinda like they're trying to demonstrate how hard it is or something? And then they literally always mention it was usually soaked in water prior to eating?
@@jimjambananaslam3596 unless you’re watching a cooking channel like Tasting History where he does exactly as they describe and makes it into a stew.
5:29 Jerry cans are a World War Two German invention. Yes, water was brought up to the trenches in old fuel cans, but not Jerry cans. When British forces captured some Jerry cans in the Western Desert, they realised they were much better than the British "flimsy" cans, so the Allies simply copied them.
Was wondering if anybody else had picked up on this. Even the term ‘Jerry’ stems from ww2. The Germans in WW1 tended to be called Fritz, The Bosch or the Hun
It's disappointing to see Dan being so common and misrepresenting history when he indeed knows better.
He showed a "flimsy can" in the picture, and the term jerrycan became sinonimous with portable fuel canister roughly of that shape, so that was not a mistake.
It was the everchanging nature of living langages.
@@carloshenriquezimmer7543 Accuracy in terminology is important. It's a bit like calling a Fokker Triplane a jet, because both are planes. He's used a WW2 term for something different for a WW1 object. For an historian, that's sloppy work.
On a different note, my grandfather survived WW1 in part because of the the old flimsy cans. In 1916, he was a sergeant in charge of a party of men bringing up food and water for his platoon. He came back to his position, only to find a shell had landed in the trench, killing the entire remainder of his platoon.
@@bigbrowntau It's important in a historical essay for historians, but in a video for the lay public, the term 'jerry can' is likely more readily understood and related to the can, even if it's not an actual jerry can. In this case, in this case it's closer to calling a Panzerschreck a bazooka for ease in a video. Not technically the same thing, but one's a better understood term that audiences can more easily imagine and understand.
It is important to remember that the population from which the troops of WW1 were drawn were not at all used to luxuries. So their experience would have been quite different.
I am 65.The food we ate when I was a kid was sh*t !
@@gordonsteele5656 I'm 63 and my food as a kid was great 🤷♂
My 72 year-old mom describes her grandmother making a pot of soup/stew and how she would just keep reheating and adding ingredients so that the same soup would be going for months on end.
Oh yeah. Most of the rank and file soldiers were drawn from the British working class. For a lot of them army food was better than they were used to. Plus at least they were supplied with enough food, unlike their families back home who had to manage with what they could get.
The rations they had were way below basic home life food in the 20th century. (not in medieval times.)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the taste of corned beef with some vegetables like that seems exactly like Dinty Moore beef stew here in the US
my grandfather served in the 38th (Ottawa) Battalion of the First Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe. How he returned a sweet and loving man having gone through the things I have come to learn about staggers me. God's love, Pops.
Canada sucks
I know exactly what you are feeling, my own grandfather served with the Australian Imperial Force in the First War, and died in 1957, I was lucky to know him for my early childhood in the early '50's, and what he went through, as well as all soldiers of both sides of that conflict, through my own research absolutely staggers me as well.
God's love indeed!
IIRC, the biscuits were generally soaked in a beverage whether that was coffee, tea, or water. Additionally, it was added to the soups that were put together to thicken them. Finally, the trtench soldiers made a ersatz pastry by soaking the biscuit in condensed, sweetened milk, sprinkled sugar on top, and added raisins or other desiccated fruit.
I didn't know that you could make pastry like that with it. Thanks for the recipe :)
But for some of the troops it was the first time in their lives that they had regular meals,a similar situation happened in the 2nd world war,when conscription was introduced some of the new recruits had to be fed up for a few weeks before they could start training due to malnutrition.
Wow! I didn’t know that.
Yes, many of the draftees in the US Army gained weight in boot camp, especially those from the southern states.
Machonochie's was a brand of tinned stew, and was said to be the best thing they were issued by the troops themselves, most of whom liked it. See "Old Soldiers Never Die" by Frank Richards of the RWF. By the way, it's not pronounced "Macca-Knocky". It was s tinned beef stew, not bully beef and turnip. Some of the other manufacturers were not so good, though: sometimes a soldier would open a tin to find it contained just rice and a solitary lump of poor-quality meat. It was very obvious to the front-line troops that some firms back home were making a fortune off government contracts, to the detriment of the soldiers. Richards also mentions bacon being issued at breakfast time by field kitchens. A man was given the choice between a small square of bacon, not even a full rasher, or a dip of his bread in the fat. Ricahrds says he always chose a dip in the fat, and thought he had the better part of the deal.
My mum worked for Machonochies, and you’re right, he’s pronouncing it wrong. Can’t think of how to explain the right way though 😂
@@charliestafford9978 mak-on-acky
I believe he's exaggerating for camera which is annoying. Having made these things - the stew isn't bad at all, even cold, obviously eating it for every meal would become tiresome though. The biscuits are also far too thick to be as hard and dry as he describes, he would have shattered his teeth on hardtack that thick lol, it's like concrete.
@@mi5anthrope They were hard, but they generally were not eaten like that. They were soaked, or they were crushed up and added to other food to thicken it much in the same way hardtack was. You wouldn't be eating them like that though....
@@charliestafford9978 Mak on a kee.
One of the most memorable parts of the great novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" is the part when the protagonist goes on leave for a few days to visit his family in Germany. From an American perspective, one would expect his parents to fatten him up with home-cooked food. Instead, he brings some of his rations home to give to his parents and siblings. Apparently, due to the British blockade of Germany, the German soldiers had more food than the civilians.
In Finland we had in those days, even still have dry rye bread which the Swedish call "knäckebröd". It is only slightly hard and makes a nice crunchy sound when you bite into it. They are actually quite delicious and our and military still serve them, especially when soldiers are camping. Nothing like those rock hard bisquits.
Yeah knækbrød i very popular in Denmark. Not so much these dry crackers lol. But I do know them, and remember them being called skibskiks (ship crackers)
Comparing knäckebröd with ww1 "biscuits" or hardtack is like comparing a tank with a vw bug.
I do believe canned pumpernickel is about the best tasting bread-like substance in an MRE / ration.
@@christophedlauer1443 Yeah, we call it "näkkileipä" (leipä is bread in Finnish, näkki is just the way Finns would say "knäcke"). Yes, it is the bread of gods compared to British hardtack or any other phony product trying to pretend to be bread.
Knäckebrot (as called here in germany) is always nice :D
Dude the rest of the world has crackers too, näkkileipä is just one variety.
No cracker is comparable to hardtack because it's a solid mass of borderline unbreakable calories. 😂
The Royal Navy were issued similar biscuits made in RN Victualling Yards such as Royal Clarence Yard in Gosport. They were cooked in stews which softened them and made them edible. When made, they were baked twice to remove all moisture so they could be stored for years (if need be) in warships and were a replacement food for bread - which, as we all know, has a very short shelf life. If you knew how to cook it, government provided food was (and still is) the best alternative to fresh rations.
Hardtack.. :)
This narrator has never been truly hungry. Sure, hard tack and Bully Beef weren't gourmet food, but you were thankful you got something to eat. They were able to cook their food most of the time. Soldiers always gripe about their food, but the soldiers of the war were better off than many soldiers before them.
This. Townsend (YT channel on US 18th century cuisine, great stuff) said that they used to bash up sea biscuits/hardtack to boil a more gloopy, nutritious, satisfying stew. So now I (somebody with not a lick of the intricacies of WW1 frontline logistics) sits here asking themselves if cooking on the frontline was done in a very individual way or there were actually "communal" kitches thus enabling a cook to utilize and enhance his knowledge with the ingredients he was dealt.
Still a nice video that at least mentions that soldier's on the front did drugs because why the fuck wouldn't you?
@@LordMegatherium Townsend is a great channel. As to the soldiers eating back then, it's my understanding rations were issued to squad size units. They generally cooked and ate as a unit. This was while they were on the front line. In the rest areas, I think they had mess tents with dedicated cooking staffs.
What other such foods are /were there?
There are plenty of complaints about the current MRE's too btw. But the ration was quite innovative for the time. The biscuit was high calorie and dry and not full of sugar and had oats and barley and wholemeal so it could be used as cereal / porridge when wet or as a filler in stew. The tinned meat or 'bully' was imported from Argentina or uruguay usually - it was high in fat and the fat could be used to fry forraged food, and as a lard for small bakes. Sugar and flour were also issued. Today soldiers will carry spice or 'arromats'. There was actually quite a bit of pushback when bully was cut in about 2007 from the standing ration. But all this stuff was really only for tricky spots in the line. It was probably more common to eat from the 'Mconochie' tin which was a bunch of boiled fresh meat and veg brought up to the line in large tins that fed a section roughly. The bully etc was really only for use in the front line at tricky times. As a young guy in the 70s we always took tins of Fray bentos corned beef (bully). We'd just chop up onions and throw in dry peas and carrots and make a mess with curry powder or whatever. This was exactly the stuff they ate in the war and it was fine. If you go to Gallipoli today you'll see bully tins everywhere still. The same tin - narrow at the bottom, wide at the top. Tinned food was a game changer as it allowed all sorts of 'potted' food into the line without it spoiling and as others have mentioned, for many men, this was the best food they'd ever eaten. Soldiers are brilliant at foraging too so rabbits, birds, herbs and veg would always appear to pad out the mess. Worcestershire sauce was a common adder.
I do love the first world war content of this channel
People need to remember too, peoples tastes were far more simple back then. People could afford salt as a spice,but not much else. A simple stew or pottage was what they lived on and it was just added to as they had it. Tastewise...I don't think they missed much and were just grateful to have something in their stomach
A socialist slogan from that era: "A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends"
Those style of hard biscuits were probably based on sailors biscuits, which were designed to last a very long time on sea voyages without going mouldy or perish. The biscuits are hard because all moisture is removed from them, to make them last for so long. Dehydrated food doesn’t go mouldy while food with moisture does.
Sailor would break the biscuits with a hammer then add them to a soup, stew or a drink to soften them up.
Yeah I also know these crackers as skikskiks (ship crackers). Not very popular at all in Denmark, but I remember tasting them before where my friend had a bag
Clearly Dan has never been truly hungry. There are a few ways to make that a very nice meal. You can soften the biscuits, flavor the meat, and enjoy a tasty meal in a muddy hole if you’re resourceful enough.
K well it’s not about seeing if dans ever been hungry you twit lol it’s a funny reaction
I've read that one Tommy used a biscuit to write home, put a stamp on, and it arrived at his home in perfect condition. Another used one to carve a photo frame, varnished it and put his sweetheart's picture in.
Thinking of 1914 dental condition of most ordinary fellas, trying to bite a biscuit would have been the end for some teeth!
Watching this makes me crave bully beef! I heard a survivor of the siege of Tobruk, in WW2, say he came out heavier than when he went in because he loved the stuff! Everyone else hated it and happily traded their ration. He was never hungry.
Even if you don't appreciate waking to a unheated corned beef stew with vegetables, you don't have to be arrogant and melodramatic.
The huge logistical challenge faced when attempting to keep millions of troops fed and watered is revealed in Hannah Holman's book The Trench Cookbook 1917.
The book includes recipes compiled from books supplied by the War Office and the Red Cross
National Army Museum,
By the First World War (1914-18), Army food was basic, but filling. Each soldier could expect around 4,000 calories a day, with tinned rations and hard biscuits staples once again. But their diet also included vegetables, bread and jam, and boiled plum puddings. This was all washed down by copious amounts of tea.
The mostly static nature of the war meant food supplies were generally reliable. And soldiers were able to supplement their rations with food parcels from home, with hot meals served behind the lines in canteens and kitchens, and with food obtained from local people.
Add some water to that stew, break the hardtack into chunks, and soak it for an hour, with heat if possible. The hardtack becomes edible, the the stew becomes lobscouse.
I actually still make that stew, given it is with modern canned corn beef, potatoes, and carrots. I have never eaten it cold, but warm I like it.
My grandmothers brother William Beddows in the Kings Yorkshire Light Infantry went through most of the war from 1914 to August of 1918 when he was killed. He has no known grave. My grandad Thomas Eckersley was in the navy and was in most of the major sea battles of the war so both must have eaten and drank these things. Brilliant video bringing the past back to life, thank you for sharing this unusual information.
I read the obituaries of employees of a train company who were killed in the Great war painted on the side of the train carriages. The vast majority of these obituaries end 'he has no known grave'. 😢
Navy ate a lot better.
Jolly good for you to give William's name a mention, so sad he almost made it to the end of the war
My Canadian grandfather brought his love of Bully Beef home that corned beef was used in hash with potatoes and onions when I was growing up it was in sandwiches with chopped pickles and mustard too. I buy the South American Hereford cans a bit more expensive but well worth it to have the taste of my childhood . as I prefer fresh meat I do it once a year 😂❤🎉❤🎉❤🎉😊
I'm from USA, and growing up, when I would go on a fishing trip with my grandfather, it was guaranteed that dinner on night one was corned beef hash. A big cast iron pan with plenty oil, several potatoes peeled and sliced, a sliced up yellow onion, and a can of corned beef. The perfect end to the first day of fishing. I still eat it occasionally and love it, though my wife says that it is garbage. The next 2 or 3 nights would be as much fish as you could stomach so we could continue fishing and not exceed the legal limit.
@@michaelb1761 I am the eldest daughter and when I started school my younger sister missed me so much Grampy would come pick her up and take her fishing. We all called him Ho Ho because of his laughs. I just woke up I better just send button before go to sleep again 🍀👍👍👍👍🍀🌺🍀🖖🖖🖖🖖oops I did it again glad though it give the opportunity to thank you for sharing your fishing story ,inspiring me to share mine
Nice video Dan but I think the Jerry can was a WW2 invention and the tins used in WW1 were more likely paraffin or petrol tins very flimsy and easily damaged.
That and there were separate jerry cans with lining specifically meant to hold drinking water. They even had markings to tell them apart.
This video is pretty misinforming compared to other military/history channels. I cringed at trying to eat the biscuit straight away rather than moistening and/or smashing it to bits first.
@@MoreEvilThanYahwehHe mentioned soldiers often moistened the biscuits in tea or tried to break them up. Historians can't ever have a complete set of knowledge. Famous ones like Dan Snow are jumped on in the comments for the tiniest of mistakes.
I served in the British Army during the 1980s. We had hard biscuits called Biscuits AB (Biscuits Alternative to Bread). But we called them Biscuits 'ard Bastards).
You might hate it, but imagine taking a 12 mile hike skipping breakfast and lunch, making that, and eating it. It would be the best meal to have.
This episode was awesome! Thank you for the insight
My great grandfather would have eaten this food, thank you for your sacrifice and all the other fallen soldiers 😢 rest in peace and to all the brave soldiers that make it back. X
I was under the impression jerry cans were invented in the 1930s. And the first of them used by the british were ones they had nicked from the germans in africa
Is it just me, or did everything he just say and showed is practically how all us working class people live everyday...
I absolutely love this series! Impeccable set design, costuming, and a handsome, articulate man tasting food from a bygone era. Well done!
I don't know which dish is better. The ones they recreate or the man talking about them. 😅
Very informative! My grandfather would have eaten this. Thank you for your sacrifice!
One suspects our Dan wasn't bought up hungry, I'm a 1960's kid, and I would have been happy to eat any of this 😂
Certainly in WW2 the troops used to value tinned condensed milk as it improved the flavour of the tea
Very true. But I would think that just maybe a Tommy in the trenches of WW 1 may have added a bit of rum to his cuppa if he could.
WW1 was no different. In Gallipoli they traded condensed milk and cigarettes for nuts and dried fruit from the Turks.
I have today subscribed to this channel after meeting you to day at Old Sarum. I'm must say I'm enjoying your knowledge and wit 😀
My grandfather was a member of the 48th Highlanders (Canadian) and would have eaten this type of food as well. These types of programs on HH are great and give people a real vision of what it really must have been like. Does anyone know where you could get a recipe for the biscuits Dan attempted to eat (mind you they still might be soaking in the tea)?
The Townsends channel here on YT has further info on the subject of hardback.
Townsends just did a new video on it - ruclips.net/video/W9tdBrpp1V0/видео.html
My Great Grandfather served in The Royal Leicestershire Regiment 💂
@@paulmanson253 I'm in Australia and was going to mention the Townsends-their reputation is wide spread!
Don't forget the Nutmeg.🤣
ruclips.net/video/oPTdSMOQRnY/видео.html
If memory serves, this guy makes hardtack biscuits that would have been exactly like what Dan has here. The only difference is the shape.
You needed to have someone from a "poor" working class background try this stew cos I bet it isn't that bad! Where I come from we have corned beef hash which was a regular meal when I was a kid. So I personally like corned beef & I'd like to try this. Obviously I realise the soldiers would have been eating it a few days old & a bit thrown together in pretty dirty conditions. But corned beef with veg really doesn't sound terrible at all. Forget the biscuits tho......
Crunch up the biscuits with something and throw em with the stew and stir. Hot water will help with breaking down the hardness.
It's like watching a kid that only eats chicken nuggets, review the diet of a WWI Soldier.
The way that good food can boost morale is something incredible, thats why we love enjoying a good dinner or lunch with other people.
I still own a hardtack biscuit owned by one of my great-grandfathers in WW1. It's flaking a bit in one corner but not doing badly for a 100+ year-old biscuit.
One of my favorite stories about WW1 food took place in Galipolli. There was a point on the line where the two sides were less than 100m from each other. I believe the Turks said something about low rations so the Brits tossed over some cans of bully beef. Very soon after those cans were returned by the Turks after they opened a few and tried them.
yep that happened at Quinns post in Gallipoli between the Australians and the Turks. At Quinns post some of the Turkish and Australian trenches were only eight metres apart. I heard one of the reasons the Turks returned the bully beef was because they thought it was pork which was haram. (forbidden in Islam)
But on Gallipoli the two sides did actually trade with each other too.
@@terminallumbago6465 Mostly bullets I would assume.
@@lesfox2010 Actually, quite a bit of trading of goods back and forth.
Sounds downright gentlemanly.
I think that if I had been in those trenches, bully beef stew and anything else would have been greatly received. I am sure for those condition getting anything filling was a god send.
And to be honest there are many around the world who would be very happy to have any of it
The people in Africa mining cobalt for our smart phones, laptops, and electric cars for instance.
A lot of the soldiers thought exactly the same way tbh. Dan has forgotten that a lot of those troops were from the poorer sectors of the British Lower Class. The army food was not only as good, if not better than the food they were used to, it was also plentiful as the British Army aimed for a minimum of around 4,000 calories per day.
For an officer of the period, corned beef stew would have been horrifying, but for a former miner from the Black Country, or the Welsh Valleys? It would have been ambrosia....
Yet another excellent edition of putting us in their shoes.
Remember my grandfathers talking about it from their experience in WWI.
Canadian soldiers carried hardtack into battle during the South African War (also known as the Boer War) and the two world wars.
I just finished Ernest Junger's book Storm of Steel. For those who don't know Junger was a German Hauptmann(captain) in the trenches. Towards the end of the war he spoke of how when he and his men went into British and French trenches they took the food that was left behind when the positions were abandoned.
The biscuits where put into the stew or other liquid meals to soften & thicken the meals. Biscuits brown ( not quite as bad ) has been in ration packs (MRE) right up to today 😂
You the man Dan
I feel so soft, pampered and lazy.
I never would have survived in any historical epoch.
I remember in a series called Soldiers:A History of Men in Battle in the episode Sinews of War one British veteran said he knew of one soldier who liked to eat Maconochie stew cold and he said it was absolutely revolting, i guess you can get used to anything.
Ah I remember the word Machon-a-key.I don't think they added the word stew to the end though, it was just Machon-a-key.
My Dad said when your hungry you will eat anything, which is true.
Never heard about the drugs bollocks. That said a number of medicines contained all sort of stuff banned now. Kalin Morph was a chalk and morphine used for indigestion and heartburn but nobody thought other than you took it for what it was sold for, unlike now where kids will try anything if it sends them wappy.
Yep, when you're hungry enough.
I could watch Dan Snow all day! So wise and charismatic. He would be the perfect history teacher.
I could watch him disappearing into the distance , as arrogant as his father .
@@gazzertrn rent free
Good video Dan. I liked this one.
absolute state of your roll ups Dan
I always love hearing about earlier eating and ration habits, like industrial workers in the late 1800s drinking beer pretty much sun-up to sun-down, all the way to Mad Men era ad men drinking endless liquor all work day. My grandpa wasnt in ads but had a similar living style and apparently had a bar that came out of his trunk, so whenever they'd go to the beach they would send the kids and women off while getting wasted in the lot lol. Now I got this image of a French soldier on a pint of wine, having smoked 1 of 2 ounces of tobacco, on cocaine, caffeine and lets not forget pure adrenaline holding the line for hours waiting for something awful. Crazy to imagine being in their boots and I'm glad they were pretty blasted considering the endless hell they faced
Dan takes one for the team.
Love your work 👍
Nice one Dan 👍
I love these videos
I thought the biscuit (hard tack / ships biscuit) was supposed to be rehydrated with warm water before eating, either to thicken a stew or to make a fake porridge.
The soldiers did not have the luxury of heating the food.
@@SimoExMachina2 google “Tommy cooker” for details of the portable stoves which they took into the trenches.
In ideal conditions, yes. But it rained a lot on the western front, allied trenches were always completely wet or literally flooding, so cooking spots were few, and tommy cookers definitely attracted sniper fire in low light conditions. Cooking was practically impossible, for there were very few places and time of day that allowed it
@@charlesc.9012 Tommy cookers burnt ethanol, which has an invisible flame (the same as a modern Trangia stove), so I don’t understand how they would be visible to snipers, especially if used at the bottom of a 200cm deep tench.
@@graemer3657 Theoretically, yes, but industrial chemistry of the age and chronic problems with manufacturing and supply guaranteed that nothing went right. Besides, who is to stop most men drinking it outright?
I remember reading an account of an Irish soldier in ww1 he really missed fresh dairy products like butter and milk and he thought the army tea was absolutely awful.
What account was this that you had read?
@Herman Snerd it was called something like the beara soldier. It was about a man named James o sullivan from the beara peninsula in west cork. I read it many years ago now.
My grandfather said that most meals in France were soup. The rain ran off their helmets into whatever meal they had and became "soup"!
Excellent information
Two ounces of baccy a day? I think that was more likely per week, I smoke roll-ups and two ounces lasts me four or fives days at least.
That’s what I though a 50g pack lasts me nearly a week
About 50 durries. Being up at all hours, either bored rigid or getting shot at and shelled you'd probably get through that 2 oz a bit quicker.
@@Daniel-vl8mx From what I have read there was little boredom; they were constantly having to shore up damages, dig communications trenches, listening posts etc., as well as killing rats. I was infantry, and cigarettes were too bulky, while rolling baccy was great until your papers got wet. For that reason many of us turned to pipe smoking. Looked bloody ridiculous, a bunch of teenagers bubbling and gurgling away at a variety of outrageous pipes!
@@BertPreast There are plenty of reports of boredom, and soldiers filling time with card games, gambling, making trench art, writing letters etc, as well as being given busywork to keep the boredom from affecting morale and behaviour.
Of course boredom between action tends to be the lot of the soldier,. It certainly was when I served.
My sister-in-law's dad used to smoke 2oz of baccy a day. Mind you, the only times he wasn't smoking was when he was eating, or asleep. I'll swear that man was a chimney! No one was surprised when he died of congestive heart failure at 58.
2 oz of bacca is a hell of alot a day.
When you're active, outdoors all day working, on one thing or another and wound up with adrenaline, caffeine and cocaine, you'd burn off that fat in no time esp. in the colder weather. If you look at photos of front-line British soldiers from WW, there isn't a fat one in any of them, besides, if there's a chance you could be killed any moment, you ain't going to worry about the long-term effects of a high fat diet or smoking either for that matter.😁
Anyone else immediately think of Max Miller and his hard tack clip as soon as Dan started in on those biscuits?
Great video, but I think you should have added water and cooked that up for a while. I'd think pepper would have been a highly sought after thing too. I didn't now the army got rum too, I always thought that was just a navy thing. The drug thing was a surprise too. It would have been interesting to know if what was sent by loved ones was reliably delivered.
We got a tot of rum while on exercise in the 1970s!
Sounds like that stew was their version of the notorious MRE Vomlette... which I had the misfortune of having once
And once was bad enough....🤢
As a Great War living historian I have had this menu at many public shows. Fortunately I love corned beef. and Hard tack soaked in tea does grow on you haha. However the thought of having to fight on this diet is not a pleasant one. Those men have my undying respect and admiration
this is great vid
My grandfather served in the Royal Field Artillery in Mesopotamia (hence, not in the trenches of the Western Front). He had some 'interesting' things to say about the rations!
What's so bad about bully beef stew? I ate it often growing up and was glad to have it. I still cook it and eat it sometimes. Some people are so spoiled these days. As for the hard tack biscuits, you soak them in your tea, or crush them and add them to your stew, very filling to a hungry stomach.
Although water was carried in petrol cans in WW1 the "Jerry Can" is from WW2! Luckily nutrition has come along way in the last 109ish years. Lest we forget
those biscuits were an Aussie staple to, we even had a version in the rat packs in the 80s lol.
Yep, "Biscuits Survival". Those and a tin of Luncheon Meat Type 1 and you'd have a meal not much different from the one Dan tried. Smash those biscuits and mix them into the meat, and heat it over a solid fuel stove if you are lucky, but I've eaten it cold often enough.
Hardtack is the food for the American Civil War soldiers also. If you want put it in your coffee or whatever. Surprised no one remembers Pemican it’s a lot healthier than hardtack. It keeps well. FYI- In 1972 aboard the USS Iwo Jima ( LPH-2) I had some c-rations given to me dated 1937. The only thing that was bad were the cigarettes that were in there. Now those were Nasty. But the rest was fine.
I have notice that there is always an effort to "reinvent the wheel", so to speak. Pemmican will likely closer to D-Ration (military chocolate) in purpose and convienient, except it's far more edible (D-ration has a requirement of "taste a little bit better than boiled potato so the troops doesn't just eat it as snack")
@@Jestersage Yeah I remember reading before that during WW2 chocolate makers were directed to make it taste as awful as they could so the soldiers wouldn’t develop cravings for it.
My grandfather was a baker in WWI for the US Army in Siberia. I actually think he ate pretty well -- no trenches. However, he DID contract Pneumonia which troubled him (weakened his lungs) for the rest of his life - he lived to be about 85.
Very informative
Weren't Jerrycans invented in the 1930's?
Yea, i thought the British didnt start using them until they copied the German ones in 1941.
@@stc3145 Definitely a WW2 thing. Makes sense aswell considering in WW1 what would they be used for? The only popular motorised transport in use was the steam train. Cars weren't in common usage, tanks weren't invented until late in WW1.
@@stc3145 Not copied, stolen.
he is doing it wrong , you soak the briskets in tea or beer or coco to soften them , the time is not 24 hours more like 15 minutes but you have to actually put it in the tea unlike what he did . they were also issued desiccated vegetables ( mostly onion , potato , carrot and turnip) along with tea , coco , sugar , Coffey , chase , plum and apple jam , dried fruit , alcahol , tobaco , wheat or oat poorage and would get luxury goods from home or well wishers
Auto correct is your friend lol
I remember eating some hardtack at a civil war event. The trick is to soak them in a cup of hot coffee or tea. Others today may distain it, but we're spoiled by way of comparison. I was actually quite happy to have such a hot and filling breakfast on that very chilly Virginia morning with my friends :)
My grandfather and grandmother lived through WW l in the German Empire and my Opa was in the army of the German Empire. I forgot what he ate but I remember him complaining how horrible trench warfare was. They never show the 500,000 bodies from the Naval blockade of 1917. All that was left were turnips and often they were frozen from the cold. They never show how the Germans looked like Holocaust survivors after the blockade. That is what victors do. The same with WW ll. You never see the bodies of Operation Gomorrah but only mostly buildings. That is because the British military confiscated all of the footage they could so the world would not see the horror of the genocide of Germans. It was not just a strategic bombing. Even many people in the U.K. were against it. My mother was born in Hamburg in 1921 but after years of struggle her parents that helped raise me, took her to the city of New York in 1927 when she was 6. They left most of the other relatives behind but of course stayed in contact via letters some of which I still have.
What is most stupid is that the Germans and British are so similar. I was raised in the U.S.. The marriage of British and Irish with German Catholics and Lutherans was so common when I was young after WW ll.
My profile is that of Mohammad Ali. Born here in New York, my father's parents were from Palermo, Sicily. I had too dominants as parents. It was not easy. It was like living in the movie "Bugsy" with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
You might be interested in a book, "Rifleman" by Victor Gregg. From a very poor family in the east end of London he became a regular soldier just before the war serving in India and Palestine.
During the war he served in the western desert and was eventually taken prisoner at the Battle of Arnhem when as a machine gunner he was one of those left behind to cover the retreat. In 1945 as a prisoner in Dresden he and a friend had sabotaged the factory they were working in for which they were not unreasonably condemned to death. The prison was hit killing his friend but allowed him to escape and he took part in the rescue work.
He passed away in 1921 at the age of 101 and his memoirs were professionally written in 2010. He had no conscience about his time as a rifleman or machine gunner but I heard him on the radio in his 90s of Dresden he said, you see a German woman clasping her child to her being carried through the air into a bonfire you've got to think we are the good guys and good guys don't do these things.
I've read quite a bit on Dresden and the trouble was they had got so used to bombing everything ever nobody would to stop it. An RAF intelligence officer could see no good reason for it and did and did as much as he could to stop it. He managed to convince the Americans who said, if the British don't bomb we won't but that was as much as he achieved.
Tragically the military are like that at every level. A British lieutenant was sent on a night reconnaissance of a village in Normandy and discovered one side was undefended. That was the purpose of the patrol but when he reported it he was told it was too late to change the original plan! The next day his platoon followed up the attack passing quite unnecessary casualties in the process - the military are like that, often people who know the right thing to do, do not have the authority to do it.
The extent to which public mind had been poisoned by 1945 is best illustrated by the following. General Horrocks was one of Montgomery's leading generals and he had been severely wounded early in WW1 spending most of it in a prison camp. When he had recovered sufficiently to travel he never forgot the kindness of the German sergeant who escorted him to the camp and protected him from angry Germán civilians. In 1945 his army was part of the army of occupation and he gave a Christmas party for German children the first they had for years. When the press reported it he got van loads of hate mail. He said in an interview in the 1970s, the nice ones said I was stark raving mad so I don't need to tell you what the rest were like.
War is like that original it reduces the humanity and decency of everyone. The only thing a conscience can do is make you recognize it was wrong afterwards.
And we're already as a western society, jeering and laughing at footage of Russians limping and crying as they get shot, while RUclips commentors laugh.
It's amazing when fighting evil, how easily we become the same wickedness.
@@freebeerfordworkers Thank you! This is the first I'm seeing of your comment. Somehow, RUclips does not notify people of all the comments made to them. It makes no sense but neither does this life.
You are trivialising the Holocaust. The British blockade of Germany was very effective, it was designed to starve Germany of food and resources needed to win the war. The Holocaust had few survivors, Nazi Germany was sadly extremely effective at exterminating the Jews of Europe. There was no amount of work, collaboration, service or surrender, the Jews could do for Germany, it was all a matter of luck if you survived. When Germany pushed for an armistice in 1918, the British didn't suddenly start killing Germans by the millions. The blockade at one point after the armistice was lifted. That never happened in the Holocaust. When the ghettos in occupied Europe ran out of food, the survivors were sent to the gas chambers. Many of them died en route in catttle cars. Germany needn't have pushed for a war. In WW2 the Nazis kept on invading, and invading, nothing could satisfy their hunger for power and control. Bomber Harris (head of bomber command) as he is affectively known, sumed it up nicely "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind." Comparing the British to the Nazis is insane Mohammad. I wonder why someone like you would trivialise the Holocaust.
I'm sorry but corned beef and veg is not disgusting
Corned beef hash, nothing wrong with that, is he vegan or just a plonker. Biscuits are bad though.
It is if you have any standards when it comes to cooking.
@@stc3145 These are rations though, not camp cookhouse food but trench rations.
Not gonna lie, my school used this video for us to take notes from for my homework
Great video!
Who cooked it? Pvt. Baldrick?
Rat O Van.
There is an alternative perspective from the German side of the Western front - they were being starved. Germany simply could not produce or source enough food for its troops. A further History Hit video might explore the condition of the German and Austrian troops on the fronts that they faced - their conditions were rather worse than for the allies... It might also highlight the extent of the war as many stories focus on the Western front, which was actually a minor part of the war, but nonetheless brutal. It might also be mentioned that my Grand Father's sisters were both engaged to soldiers in the First World War, they lost their partners and remained single for the rest of their lives as 'there were not enough men left to marry' - which is tragic.
Worse or hardly any food for sure but they did hold the better position in most cases. Built up and better defended, not to mention much more dry than the allied trenches. Wonder if we were to ask each side to compare and contrast conditions what they would have said or possibly even would have wanted to trade, conditions wise anyway.
If the Western Front was a 'minor' part of the war as you claim then perhaps you can explain to me why WWI was not decided until one side was defeated on the Western Front?. Fact is it was not in fact a minor part of the war, the Western Front was THE primary Front, it was where three of the major Powers of the war had focussed the majority of their forces. The Majority of the British, French and German armies were on the Western Front. German Forces on the Eastern Front were a minority proportion of their army. WWI was not going to end until the war on the Western Front was decided, all other fronts were secondary, hence why Britain and France did not surrender in 1917 when Russia did.....
Great stuff H H . Thank you. Hey Dan , Do you have a new found respect for the current MREs now? LOL
J.R.R. Tolkien who served in the trenches during World War One makes mention in his book The Hobbit of a food called Cram which was undoubtedly inspired by Hardtack biscuits.
“If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don’t know the recipe; but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise.”
I've smoked cigarettes and Marijuana for years and Dan rolls better than I do😅😂
Doubt it's as disgustig as he's making out! If that's corned beef out of a can mixed up with cold cooked veg then that won't warrant the faces he's pulling!
He is just a spoiled brat from the officersclass
I have read several accounts from Australian diggers in WW1 who found the Maconochie ration far superior to tinned bully and army biscuits
truly one of the historical mukbangs of all time
I heard stories of soldiers grounding the biscuits up in to a powder as best they could and added it to the beef with some water to make their stews when they had the time to do so. As far as eating things cold, it was still done that way in my days in the infantry. In combat or not we just didnt fuss and would eat things as is. We had a far better menu so to speak though. Unless you got stuck with the vegetarian omelet mre. Whoever cleared that thing for use should be water boarded. Cruel and unusual is the only thing i can say about that thing. Wouldnt even force it on prisoners. I know there has to be other grunts who can attest to this in the comment section. Some of the best pog bait though.
I watch this and think what an effete waste of space Dan 'NepoBaby' Snow actually is. Most of the lads would have wolfed this down without a second thought.
it's probably still better than the freeze dried meals the soldiers here in norway gets... never re-hydrates, and is as tasteless as air.
Dan Snow rolling skill is good. Makes one wonder a lot of things
Our neighbour when I was growing up was a cook on the HMS Ark Royal (I think) in WW 2.
He would make this concoction he called camp pie, which took about 2-3 days to make.
By then I was getting a little curious about it and was dying to try some.
When I finally did, I almost spat it out. It was foul. Never let my curiosity get the better of me again when it came to Navy food.
Nice to see a history channel that shows... you know... history.
God bless the men who laid down their lives in that war so the World could be free of tyranny