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Updated: May 12, 2025
In a corner lay a heap of mouldy straw and a bed-mattress; the table and fireplace were littered with dirty pots and dishes, the floor with empty jam and biscuit tins, opened and unopened bully-beef tins, more being full than empty because the British soldier must be very near starving point before he is driven to eat 'bully. Over everything lay, like a white winding-sheet, the cover of thick plaster-dust shaken down from the ceiling by the hammer-blows of the shells.
All down the line men, infinitely grubby, were producing still grubbier fragments of bully-beef and biscuits from their persons. For an hour, squatting upon the sodden floor of the trench it was raining yet again the unappetising, intermittent meal proceeded. Then "I'm afraid," replied Wagstaffe, "that it was bombs. It was right in this trench, too, about a hundred yards long.
Sammy answered, "I have worked with this fellow for three nights, and I have been treating him to some of my lunch, and he seems to be pretty hungry." Then he said, "We will all save food from our next parcel issue chocolate, bully-beef, and biscuits and I will take them and see what I can get for them." We all agreed, but we hadn't much hope of getting what we wanted.
One by one the men stirred, stretched, and looked dazedly about them. Presently, when consciousness returned, we began to remember that it was twenty-four hours since we had eaten. Haversacks were searched for what remained of the bully-beef and biscuits, which were very hard to get down without water, and of that we had none. In this respect the horses were in worse plight than we.
Rat came along and nibbled at the meat, we would pull the trigger and the rat would make a hurried exit out of this world of course we could only do this at night. During the day our favourite pastime was getting up hot lunches and serving afternoon tea, and most of the soldiers became expert at this. Our cookstove consisted of an old bully-beef can with holes punched in it.
My impressions of the next ten days are of grooming, feeding, and exercising in the cool twilight of dawn, sweltering dusty drills, often in sand-storms, under a blazing mid-day sun, of "fatigues" of all sorts, when we harnessed ourselves in teams to things, or made and un-made mountains of ammunition boxes a constant round of sultry work, tempered by cool bathes on white sand, grapes from peripatetic baskets, and brief intervals of languid leisure, with al fresco meals of bully-beef and dry bread outside our tents.
Then, duty accomplished, he reconciled himself to the corner of fairyland in which he had awoke that morning. Things must take their course, and while they were taking it, why worry? So long as they didn't commit the outrage of giving him bully-beef for dinner, the present coolness and comfort sufficed for his happiness. The replies to the telegrams were satisfactory.
The guard would wake us up about 3.30 A.M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and in sandy dells, sleeping on our haversacks and water-bottles, and our pith helmets near by. We got an issue of biscuit and jam, or biscuit and bully-beef, to take with us, and each one carried his iron rations in a little bag at his side.
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