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Updated: June 15, 2025
Over our fire we could boil the full of our mess tin of water and make our tea also, we could warm up our rations in this way, and meat and vegetables tasted a lot better when they were hot. We also carried Oxo cubes and prepared coffee so we could have a nourishing drink at any time. Some time on in February preparations were made for a raid on the German trenches.
Before drinking the concoction it is necessary to remove any dead fishes that may be floating on the surface, and also make certain that none of the Oxo is wasted by remaining underneath the finger nails. At intervals I was very gratified to see that the sky, to the north and north-east, was illuminated by distant searchlights.
Curiously enough my presence at that time of night created no suspicion, for I passed them without being spoken to. Before taking a road leading to the west, I sat down and dissolved my last Oxo cube in a mug of cold, greenish canal water.
We arranged everything, and then got Oxo for the men, many of whom had had nothing to eat for two days. They are a nice-looking lot of men and boys, with rather handsome faces and clear eyes. Their absolute exhaustion is the most pathetic thing about them. They fall asleep even when their wounds are being dressed.
These rations are intended to be used only in an emergency, and, believe me, only in an emergency are they used. There was compressed beef compressed air, we called it; there were Oxo cubes and there was tea. In addition there were a few hardtacks.
After the pilot had left us outside Flekkerö, it was not long before the darkness of the August evening hid the outlines of the country from our view; but Oxö and Ryvingen flashed their farewells to us all through the night. We had been lucky with wind and weather at the commencement of our Atlantic cruise in the early summer; this time we were, if possible, even more favoured.
The "iron ration" consists of a pound of "bully beef", a small tin containing tea and sugar enough for two doses, some Oxo cubes, and a few biscuits made of reinforced concrete. They are issued for just such an emergency as we were in as we lay in our isolated dug-out. The soldier is apt to get into that sort of situation almost any time, and it is folly ever to be without the ration.
These, however, and others of the now numerous lights along that dangerous coast, are of comparatively recent erection. Many persons now living can remember the time when for long reaches the only lighting was the gleam of the white breakers themselves. And the captain who had passed the Oxö light off Christiansand might think himself lucky if he sighted the distant Jomfruland up by Kragerö.
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