TOPIC:

Extracts of a letter sent home by a RA Driver to his Parents in Birmingham were reported in the Worcestershire Chronicle of 30th December 1899. The letter was obviously written towards the end of his voyage to Capetown and posted when he arrived. He reported he was hungry and his bones were beginning to poke through his skin and that their diet on the boat had been "Bully Beef and Spratt's Potted Dog Biscuits".

Hi Berenice.....

No they are from my own collection.....

Mike

This detail from a photograph of the Staffordshire Regiment's Vickers-Maxim shows two tins of corned beef behind a full belt of 1-pound pompom shells.

Unfortunately I cannot decipher the label. It looks something like N.O.M. & Co., but nothing comes up on a Google search...




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I should have mentioned this thread also......

www.angloboerwar.com/forum/13-miscellany...anadian-scouts#70766

Mike

This hardtack biscuit passed through Mallams Auctioneers on 13 Dec 2021 (hammer £600 GBP).

Reverse of label with the lines:

"From Modder River's bank I send / To you A Christmas Greeting / 'Twill hold you praise to think of me / Until our Merry meeting / 'Tis hard to give ones daily bread. / My hunger? I'll risk it / For I must send a Christmas card / And you must take the biscuit!"

"From J. S . Martin / Sgt i/e F.P.O. / 9th Brigade, 1st Div. / Kimberly relief Column"

Reverse of biscuit apparently printed with War Department details - possibly "W.D. RATION"?. It seems extraordinary that they went to the trouble of printing every biscuit in this way. And I'm not sure that printer's ink would have been particularly beneficial for a soldier's diet.






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Morning Post, 24th November 1900

CAMP COOKERY FOR SOLDIERS.

The important question of foods for the field, the quality of emergency rations, and the arts and crafts of military kitchens on active service are left very much to luck and the last moment, and Tommy has to take his rations as he finds them; and he does not always find them appetising or hygienic. .......

One pound of Army biscuit sounds a substantial item in the daily ration, but, unfortunately, the field biscuit for the most part seems specially designed to set up and aggravate every type of intestinal trouble. It is a serious handicap to health to swallow the inevitably large ration of campaign-produced dust. The coarse and “unbolted” nature of the Army biscuit and hard “bully beef”, coupled with the chills and extremes of climate under which a tentless soldiery lives, sleeps, and has its being, contribute a heavy quota to the dysenteric and enteric sick list.

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