Whether it is a memorable meal when out of the trenches or the failure of the rations to arrive on a cold, wet morning in the front line, descriptions of life on the Western Front are littered with references to food. To those who read the accounts, soldiers appear obsessed by food. Whether soldiers are in the front line as infantrymen, serving the guns, driving vehicles or caring for animals, they need to eat.

Even if the men who had been civilians before the war and now found themselves in ‘the ranks’ had not always eaten adequate meals in civil life, they expected to be paid for their military service and to receive ‘three square meals’ a day. Many of the recruits of 1914 enlisted to get new clothes on their backs, rations to eat, regular pay and to ‘do their bit’. For many in a world before the welfare state, and at the time of an economic recession, the imperative of food and the promise of meals, not love of King and Country, brought them to the recruiting office. It was noticed by many instructors and officers that recruits rapidly filled out. Younger ones even put on stature as a response to the rations they received, combined with exercise and unaccustomed physical activity.

Although the Great War of popular imagination has soldiers constantly underfed and virtually begging for food, the reality is rather different. In the autumn of 1914, Private Frank Richards records: “There was no such things as cooked food or hot tea at this stage of the war, and the rations were very scarce, we were lucky if we got our four biscuits a man daily, a pound tin of ‘bully’ between two, a tin of jam between six and the rum ration which was about a tablespoon and a half.”

This describes the early phase of trench warfare before the supply chain to the United Kingdom and Empire was fully established and before local purchase became common. Despite these advances, there could be local problems during periods of shelling, combat or movement of units. Private Beatson recalled an occasion in the trenches when there was no food at all: “The following day we had no rations sent us, our ‘emergencies’ were done, and the men went hungry’.” In extreme circumstances, as George Coppard makes clear, casualties could provide a bonus for men in an emergency: “Gruesome and distasteful as it was, we augmented our supplies from the dead… a tin of bully in a dead man’s pack can’t help him, nor can a pack of cigarettes. Many a good smoke came our way in this manner.”

Coppard describes conditions in the frontline: “Sharing out the rations for a small unit was a bit of a lottery, especially where tins of jam, bully beef, pork and beans, butter and so on were concerned. The share-out was seldom favourable to a six-man team. So far as I know there were no hard and fast rules regarding the quantity of each type of ration a man was entitled to. The Army Service Corps were the main distributors, but how much food actually arrived in the trenches depended on such things as transport, the weather and enemy action.”

If food in the front line could vary, rations for men who were out of the line could be surprisingly generous. Private John Jackson recalled that, at Essars in Flanders, the day’s menu consisted of: “Breakfast: chipped potatoes, steak and bacon, fried onions, coffee, bread and butter. Dinner: roast chicken, boiled potatoes and carrots, rice pudding, coffee and biscuits, wine, cognac, and beer. Tea: Bacon and eggs, tea, cake and biscuits. supper: Coffee, cake, bottled raspberries and cream, followed by a good glass of ‘rum punch’ as a night-cap.”

When at the front, a knife and fork was largely dispensed with and replaced by use of a jack knife and spoon. The former item was fastened to the user by a lanyard around the waist or clipped to a belt so it could not be easily lost, and the spoon could be slipped into a pocket or tucked into the top of a man’s puttees so it could be located in a hurry. Even today, a socalled ‘racing spoon’ forms a vital item of kit for soldiers in the modern British Army.

Time out of the trenches, battery position or day-to-day routine, meant the opportunity to supplement issue rations with food and drink bought locally. This could be either from organisations such as the YMCA, Red Cross or Expeditionary Force Canteen (EFC), or from local civilians. The estaminet, a unique cross between bar and café which sprung up wherever the enterprising French or Belgian could find a surviving building and customers, became a feature of virtually every soldier’s experience of the Western Front. The term ‘plonk’ for cheap wine dates from a period when British soldiers, who preferred white to red wine, ordered glasses of ‘vin blanc’.

At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, the Regular Army’s ration strength was 125,000. On mobilisation they were joined by reservists, who expanded this force to over 300,000 men in the course of a few weeks. By November this initial force had been joined by a further 300,000 Territorials. At the same time hundreds of thousands of men rushed to volunteer, virtually swamping the pre-war system of organisation with men who had to be fed, housed and equipped. By the end of the Great War more than 5.25 million men and women were in British uniform and more than 2 million of these were on the Western Front.

Despite the appalling conditions of trench warfare, transport problems, mud and the weather, the men and women in the forces were fed every day. If the meals they received were not always delicious, they were filling and sustaining. It is no coincidence that the motto of the Army Catering Corps (and of the modern Royal Logistic Corps) was ‘We Sustain!’.