Very often, after a couple of
hymns and, perhaps, a prayer, we went across and finished up the evening
with a couple of buns and a cup of tea. One of my ambulance comrades,
an ex-baker from Johannesburg, was extremely good in helping on the
success of the refreshment bar, and frequently stood for hours together
at the receipt of custom. The returns were very large. One day, I
remember, they amounted to L22 in pennies: this would mean, I think, on
a low estimate, that something like 1,500 soldiers used the temperance
canteen on that evening. Apart from this enterprising work, private
gifts in the way of fruit occasionally arrived on the scene, and I well
remember one day when almost every "Tommy" one met carried a pine apple
in his hands. In addition to such pleasures of realised satisfaction we
enjoyed the pleasures of anticipation; for was not her Gracious
Majesty's chocolate _en route_ for South Africa? The amount of interest
exhibited in the arrival of these chocolate boxes was amazing. Men
continually discussed them, and a stranger would have thought that
chocolate was some essential factor in a soldier's life, from which we
had, by the exigencies of camp life, been long deprived! As a matter of
fact, portable forms of cocoa are extremely valuable in cases where
normal supplies of food are cut off. Every soldier on a campaign carries
in his haversack a small tin labelled "emergency rations". This cannot
be opened unless by order from a commanding officer and any infraction
of the rule is severely punished. At one end of the oblong tin are "beef
rations," at the other "chocolate rations," enough to sustain a man amid
hard and exhausting work for thirty-six hours. The chocolate rations
consist of three cubes and can be eaten in the dry state; once, however,
I came across a spare emergency tin, and found that with boiling water a
single cube made enough liquid chocolate for ten men, a cup each. People
make a great fuss in England if they don't get three or four meals a
day, but a healthy man can easily fight with much less nourishment than
this. I have seen Turkish troops during the Cretan insurrection live on
practically nothing else than a few beans and a little bread, and on
this meagre and precarious diet they fought like heroes. In the Sudan a
few bunches of raisins will keep one going all day. At the same time,
these things are to some extent relative to the individual. I have known
huge athletic men curl up in no