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The way our company worked the kitchen problem was to have stew for two platoons one day and roast dinner for the others, and then reverse the order next day, so that we didn't have stew all the time. There were not enough "dixies" for us all to have stew the same day.
Every morning I would detail a couple of men from our platoon to be standing mess orderlies for the day. They would fetch the char and bacon from the field kitchen in the morning and clean up the "dixies" after breakfast. The "dixie", by the way, is an iron box or pot, oblong in shape, capacity about four or five gallons.
Some weighed sixty and eighty pounds or more, while those from sixteen to twenty-five pounds, in all varieties, Cuban Queens, Dixies, Halbert's Honey, and Cannon Balls, were procurable at one shilling the dozen, and nearly as much produce as sent away wasted in the fields for want of a market.
Only a hundred and fifty yards away from you the German cook must be fitting his old browned and burned dixies and kerosene tins over their early morning fire. We had our early morning coffee, too. And as we walked homewards we found that from a particular point we were looking straight at a distant barn roof which is in German territory. Near it, towards his trenches, ran a road.
The quartermaster of No. 2, had produced meagre tinned meats and biscuits from his emergency stores, and had made a certain quantity of tea in dixies; he had even found a half-feed of oats for the horses; so that both horses and men were somewhat appeased. But the officers had had nothing, and the Army Service Corps detachment was still undiscoverable.
We carried three days' rations, so I climbed into my compartment, and was soon asleep. I woke shortly after the train started to find we were travelling through a big city along the banks of the River Loire. We halted about seven in the morning to feed and water the horses and make tea for the men in their dixies or oval camp kettles.
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