Rationing and restaurants

Noreen

Have alook at my article on the BBc series below for Tunisia 1943 - para 3 for how food can make a whole squadron of men giggle for weeks...

Cheers

 

Dried egg seemed bad enough but this is just ugh!

 

The landscape here in N.I. is dotted with a particular style of freestanding industrial building known the length of the province as "potato factories"; these are the crushing and drying plants where dried potato powder was produced from the province's spuds.

Potato flour, mixed with wheat flour, actually makes a very nice "savoury" bread, some of the supermarkets here with speciality in-store bakeries run off batches now and again.

 

Noreen

In war - many things are "ugh" but a situation like the one described in the article was looked on as being funny at the time - but much less than funny when we were burying many of those

same men illustrating that a day could be both funny and tragic- funny to preserve our sanity from the tragic…but I guess one had to be there...

Cheers

 

I think your point is well made. I've read countless blogposts, articles and books and feel I "know" quite a bit about the era but it never answers the recurring question: how did they all cope with it all for so many years? Did you ever find out why your tooth was blue?

 

Noreen

Never did figure out why the tooth was blue - and never did catch up with that Dentist as that tooth destroyed the top set of my teeth - and they all came out in Vancouver in the early 60's - about the same time as my ear exploded

as it caught up with the many explosions from being too near the 6 pounder I was loading….How did we cope..? - mainly laughing at the stupidity of it all - like Spike Milligan when his gun - not being correctly dug in fell over a wadi and landed

at the feet of Harry Secombe - and Spike asking if he could have his gun back - now we know that Spike had what is now known as PTSD and we called bomb happy - what we cannot understand is the volume of men returning fro

Afghanistan with PTSD - and killing their families….nothing different about their war apart from the enemy not wearing uniform… Bullets - Shells - Mines - still kill - often I see an Infantryman with an automatic m/c gun behind a wall - jump up -

fire a few rounds anywhere over the wall and then drop back under the wall….and I ask myself what kind of training has this clown had as he is just wasting ammunition he might need later - then they come home with PTSD and get paid out

very high compensation……or is it another benefits scrounge…?... we old uns just got on with it as we had to as there was no money left after the war and the unfriendly Government of the times refused even Alanbrooke his "prize" money-

we live in changed days - but NOT generally better days...

Cheers

 

Yes, it's all very....American-looking, isn't it? Why fire one aimed shot when half a dozen unaimed ones will do...

I've a feeling that very much nowadays they're just told to lay down suppressing fire and keep the enemy pinned until the Apaches or drones arrive!

 

Is that what the Yanks used to call 'prophylactic fire'?

 

'Changed days but not better days' - Perhaps my great-grandfather was just as disparaging about his son's WW2 experience, with that war's lower British Army casualty lists and generally less time spent at the front compared to Great-Grandpa's experiences in the trenches.

I'm sure every soldier can tell you why his war was the worst and the soldiers of today/soldiers of other armies have it good and cushy, nonetheless it's clear that PTSD is real ( they've known that for over 100 years) and that it was probably simply under diagnosed in the past, and if a man drank too much or beat his wife then that was his own business. I'd actually say that too little was being done about it, rather than too much.

Like friendly fire, a lot of people seem to think that previous generations were somehow immune to it, and I'd suggest that the evidence suggests otherwise. My grandfather simply said that he was lucky to have no imagination, so not much bothered him.

 

One round versus beating the position. Well remember when we changed over from dismounting from APCs and fighting onto the position with 'leap frogging' with the 'buddy buddy' system first used by riflemen two centuries before- one loading as his pal fired.A complete tactical nonsense. Yet again the British knowing that it was better to open up with everything and dismount on the position spent next to nothing on a pop gun - L37 7.62mm bolt on turret for the AFV432 admission that the tactics were right but unwilling to provide. The other NATO armies using 20 and 30mm calibre our tactics dictated by the treasury. We watched in awe as the German army or American army gave suppression demos - the enemy position a vey unhealthy place to be. Later my battalion formed assault sections in the Falklands - all machine gun to suppress the enemy. One round one kill sounded good but it is nonsense - a tad like shouting to the Frenchie you first old boy. The reality hit home when Thatcher won the election and the British Army of the Rhine went back to the days of -here we are lad 5 rounds for 1980 don't use them all in one go -save something for Ivan. The list of 'friendly fire' goes back before the USA was thought of - recorded that English longbowmen upset another fire team at Barnet.

My father met mother when in Scotland to reform during the BoB she was training in agricultural law and as an auxiliary nurse in Ednburgh. Later prior to going to North Africa early 1942 - as a pre war member of the flying club he managed to cadge a flight to Montrose - contacts! Then North to where my mothers farm was. He said intimidating or what? A fiancé, mother and two sisters sat down with 'farmer Alexander' and all - the table with a ham and freshly baked bread glass of wine and home made beer - he would suggest that my mother and her family had not translated the rules for rationing correctly. She in turn would say - if you knew how long those hams had been up the chimney ........



Oral Answers to Questions — Food Supplies.: Seasonal Resorts Jmeat Supplies). (21 February 1940)
Mr Roland Robinson: asked the Minister of Food what provision will be made for restaurants in seasonal resorts under the proposal that henceforward they are to be rationed to 60 per cent. of the quantity of meat which they have purchased on the average during the four weeks commencing 1st January, 1940; and whether he can give an assurance that adequate arrangements will be made for such restaurants?




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9wNJ78S2GY&list=PL2EA3CD368BD28D7F&index=6

 

A great film clip - thanks for posting it. In the shop scene when the commentator was talking about canned goods, she mentioned spaghetti. Was that actually available then? I thought it came much later.

 

I sure hope a vet replies to you here.

I have the impression that it (spaghetti) was a whole different animal in those days.
I love Italian food, and am on (edit: an Italy) 4 Star Michelin Chef Email Recipe Exchange list.
Eye popping good stuff. (How to feed 15 people at a net cost of $15.00 and have them worship the ground you walk on.)

(There is one cold weather recipe, Broccoli diced stems and some shredded Broccoli Flower stir fried individually in GOOD Anchovie sauce, olive oil and HANDFULLS of dull boring old store bought ground pepper that is just knock your socks off good...)

My Dad would never, ever ever so much as walk into a house if Italian had been cooked there that day.
The look on his face when I said "Italian Cuisine Tonight!" was just priceless. :icon_backhand: Disgust or what??? :icon_rofl:

 

Maybe it was tins of Heinz spaghetti in tomato sauce, which was first made in 1926.
Heinz was an American company.
I think you can still get it, but i'ts nothing like "real" spag. bolognaise. Very sweet and the spag. is slimey.

 

Sounds like what we used to get for school dinners.

 

Even in those days, you could have a good meal from the British Restaurant and quite tasty too, I might say! A typical menu would be roast beef, roast potatoes, peas, gooseberry tart and custard, and a cup of tea -- all for 9d (4p).

What about food rationing in mid war? Here is an example of a typical week's ration: 2oz tea, 8oz sugar, 4oz jam, 2oz lard, 2oz butter, 2oz margarine, 1oz cheese, 4oz bacon, three quarters of a pound of meat and one egg, if you were lucky. The meat could be supplemented with corned beef. Potatoes 5lb for 6d, a small loaf would cost 2 3/4d (1p), and a large loaf was 4 1/2d (2p) (all off white) and milk 2 1/2d/pint (1p). About three pints of milk a week were allowed. There were two particular pages in your ration book, which were marked Personal Points (sweets) and those pages were subdivided into columns marked D and E. There wree four Ds marked D1 and four Es marked E1, thereby indicating that these were four weeks in the first month. Likewise, when month two arrived, the D and E coupons would be marked D2 and E2 and so on, to the end of the year. At the height of the rationing you could get three ounces of sweets or chocolate, usually Cadbury's Blended, from your coupons per week. One ounce for D and two ounces for E.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/27/a4686627.shtml

 

Yes, it's interesting to note that rationing was actually worse post-war than it was during the war. My father (born 1949) still has his baby ration card.

I remember my grandfather reminiscing about eating at the Savoy Grill with his friend from 45 Recce, and how the place wasn't allowed to charge above a certain tariff, though I believe many places got round this regulation eventually through a 'rare foods' loophole or something.

 

8oz seems like a lot of sugar to me compared with everything else. What was it all used for?

 

The 8oz of sugar was used to ruin my teeth! Puddings cakes biscuits and preserves used a lot and it was recommended that jams were at least 60% sugar. I remember having sneaky sugar sandwiches (lessons from my older brothers). My mother had an elongated oval silver sugar bowl which I am sure would take at least 6oz. You buttered bread and put in sideways in the bowl spooning the sugar on til coated. There would have been telltale lumps of butter and bread left as evidence. Lol!

 

Have a look at my post in this section under heading of WVS Canteen menu for a glimpse of a typical diet in 1939. The sugar would have been used in making all those puddings and custard.

 

On the issue of post-WW2 PTSD and why it didn't seem to come to the fore as it does nowadays...

Is that actually entirely correct? The levels of violent crime among 20-30 somethings spiralled up sharply immediately after the war Enough to appear in relatively short order in that slowmoving but eventual indicator of social trends and changes - the British cinema. Dirk Bogarde's young violent criminal in The Blue Lamp, complete with bringback Luger IIRC?

Here, and in the U.S., there were jobs a-plenty for the guys when they came home. Here, in the nouhghties and after, the majority of guys came home from Afghanistan to the end of their term of service and redundancy and unemployment...all adding to their problems reacclimatising. In WW2 however, the guys went to work....but couldn't shake off the effects of what they had experienced....and often just worked to throw off the shackles of discipline and work every weekend - when they went buck mad for 48 hours. or what passed for buck mad in those days...

In fact, it's entirely arguable that PTSD resulted in the growth of ONE legendary social trend in the U.S...