Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (71 page)

When Lieutenant H. E. Young, a field research officer in nutrition attached to the Medical Directorate, carried out nutritional surveys of the 7th and 9th Divisions in New Guinea at the beginning of 1944, he
found that the ‘hard work [which] had been put into the question of feeding the soldier’, and the co-operation between medics, quartermasters and nutritional advisers, had produced a better, more balanced and also more palatable ration. In addition, the effort to transport these rations to troops in combat had improved.
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Although the men hated the tinned cabbage, they liked the dehydrated carrots and onions. They were eating the Tasmanian pea sprouts raw and greatly enjoying the three bread rolls issued to them daily. The nutritional value of the bread had been improved by the addition of 6 per cent wheatgerm to the flour. The men were drinking their supplies of fruit juice and enjoyed the chocolate bars in the operational ration. Even though native porters were scarce, the field kitchens were managing to take two hot meals a day up to the forward troops on the front line.
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The troops continued to show signs of mild vitamin deficiencies, but the experience of contemporary soldiers shows that, no matter how high the quality of the rations, this is a normal by-product of living on dried food fortified with artificial vitamins. Ration packs can never act as a completely satisfactory substitute for fresh food, and Australian soldiers today suffer a decline in their immune status and lower vitamin levels in their blood when performing manoeuvres while subsisting on today’s more sophisticated ration packs.
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While their Japanese opponents on the other side of the front line had been abandoned to hunger by their high command, by 1944 Australian sick rates in New Guinea had fallen and the morale of the troops had greatly improved.
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NUTRITIONAL RECONDITIONING – THE INDIAN ARMY

If malnutrition became a problem among British and Australian troops after living on field rations for too long, among the troops recruited from the colonies army doctors and quartermasters were confronted by a far more deep-seated problem of endemic malnutrition. The Bechuanaland recruit, Robert Kgasa, recalled that quite a lot of the men who arrived at the training camp in Lobatsi were sick. However, a few weeks on an army diet transformed them. ‘Oh it was a change! All of those who looked elderly, in about three to nine months, they were young, and could even play football. Men would put on weight.’
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Selogwe Pilane, who was among the first intake of recruits, reported ‘we were fat and healthy by the time we left Botswana’.
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In India the problem required more than a few weeks of good food in a training camp. During the first Burma campaign in 1941–42 both British and Indian troops suffered from malnutrition and vitamin B deficiency. This was unsurprising given the disorganization of the supply lines and the chaos of the retreat. However, once the men were back at their bases on a remedial diet high in protein and protective foods, the Indian troops took far longer to recover, suggesting that they were already malnourished before the exigencies of the military campaign made them physically unwell. Part of the problem was the poverty of the ration allocated to the Indian troops. British soldiers in the Indian army did not receive a generous weekly ration, but their 16 ounces of bread, beef and milk, 8 ounces of vegetables, 10 ounces of potatoes and 4 ounces of onions, plus sugar, salt and tea was generous in comparison to the Indians’ miserly 24 ounces of atta (ground wheat for chappatis) or rice, 3 ounces of lentils, 2 ounces of potatoes and ghee (clarified butter for cooking), sugar and salt. In October 1942 the British troops were put on to full field service rations which provided a far more generous 4,500 calories a day, including significantly more bread, meat and milk. But the food shortages in India meant that the Indian government was reluctant to increase the food rations for Indian troops.
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By this time the Indian army had swollen by 2 million to around 3 million men. The military need for manpower meant that recruitment practices changed, and rather than concentrating on drawing men from the traditional ‘martial races’ in the north-west, the army enlisted men from all regions of the sub-continent. The economic situation in India was so dire that many artisans and labourers, who had been badly hit by the inflation of food prices, volunteered in search of regular pay and food.
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The rules were relaxed to allow men who were underweight to join the army. As a result, the army collected together a ragged assortment of men who clearly required ‘thorough nutritional reconditioning’ before they could be transformed into a fighting force.
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An anaemia investigation team was set up which fed the men on a variety of experimental diets and took regular measurements of their weight. Even on the meagre standard army ration the men gained 2–5 kilograms within four months of enlisting in the army.
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Despite the new recruits’
weight gain on the standard ration, malnutrition and vitamin deficiency diseases remained a problem across the army and it became clear to the medics that the ration system was desperately in need of reform, and that it was essential to introduce animal protein and protective foods into the Indian soldiers’ diet.

The commanding officers in the Indian army were, however, extremely reluctant to tamper with the ration scales. They were steeped in the old ways of the Raj, which scrupulously respected caste prejudices and food taboos. This outdated approach harked back to the shock of 1857 when a violation of dietary taboos was supposed to have sparked off a mutiny among Indian troops, who rose up against their officers and British rule.
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The exaggerated respect for food taboos resulted in a ration system which was divided into a formidable number of caste-appropriate diets. Hindus could not be served beef or Muslims pork, and both often ended up with rather tough goat meat. In addition, the British Indian army was joined on the sub-continent by American airmen, a small American infantry force known as Merrill’s Marauders, who trained two divisions of Chinese troops stuck in India after the retreat from Burma, and Middle Eastern and West and East African troops. The foreign troops required specialized foods such as mealie meal for the South Africans and burghal (a sort of lentil) for Trans-Jordanian troops.
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As a consequence, the Indian quartermaster became bogged down by an overly complex system which worked with 198 different ration scales.
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The various restrictions were printed on the backs of the ration forms in ‘microscopic type’, and during the audits the harassed food officials found themselves accused of over-provisioning because they had missed details such as that the issue of cans of meat and vegetables required a cut in the fresh vegetable ration.
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The prejudices of the old guard were finally overcome in 1943 when India began to mobilize for a push into Burma and south-east Asia. An Indian army catering corps was formed and the field service ration was improved. Mutton, carefully labelled as
halal
for the Muslims and
jhatka
for the Hindus and Sikhs, was introduced. Fresh vegetables, fruits and marmite, rich in vitamin B, were added to the menu. An emergency ration pack suitable for use by any Indian no matter what caste was developed, containing a chocolate bar fortified with vitamins which provided 1,350 calories. A twenty-four-hour operational 2,700-calorie ration contained
biscuits, chocolate, cheese, a tin of sardines, sugar, milk powder, tea and salt. Eight-man composite ration packs provided a hearty 4,400 calories and incorporated tins of mutton.
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Like the British and the Commonwealth armies, the Indian army underwent a revolution in provisioning techniques which acknowledged the necessity of a ration which not only gave the soldier energy but also protected his health.

Britain and the Dominions ended the war with healthier populations and an expectation among the general population that the state was responsible for ensuring the health of its people. A similar process occurred within the British and Commonwealth armies. This co-operation between the state and scientists and, in the armies, between medics and quartermasters, allowed the discoveries of nutritional science to be applied to the diet of civilians and soldiers, with beneficial effect. These developments were extended into the post-war civilian and military culture. In 1944 the British Army Council decided to extend the life of the Army Catering Corps.
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It was no longer seen as a temporary answer to a wartime problem but as an integral part of the regular army. In Australia the work of Stanton Hicks was continued at a laboratory at Scottsdale in northern Tasmania, set up by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organization to work on the application of food technology to the nutritional improvement of military rations.
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After independence the Indian army eventually set up its own Defence Food Research Laboratory at Mysore in 1961. Post-war soldiers throughout the world could expect their rations not only to be as flavoursome as possible under the circumstances but also to maintain their health. However, this apparently positive side-effect of war also helped to create a less constructive post-war view of eating as a means solely to achieve a narrowly defined idea of physical health.
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This has promoted nutritional scientists to a position of power over food choices in western societies which many would argue is beyond their capabilities. In the post-war world nutritionists have been allowed to define which foods are healthy or unhealthy and to dictate which foods people should and should not eat.

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An extraction rate of 70–75 per cent removes the bran and the wheat germ (containing fats and minerals). An extraction rate of 85–90 per cent removes only the bran and makes for a more nutritious, if browner, flour.

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Member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service

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Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes

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Commonwealth Scientifi c and Industrial Research Organization

17

The United States – Out of

Depression and into Abundance

The war gave a lot of people jobs. It led them to expect more than they had before … We were gonna reach the end of the rainbow.

(Peggy Terry, from Kentucky, who worked in a munitions factory in Michigan during the war)
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When America fed us, men ate but couldn’t finish it all.

(Labour corps worker from Tanna, Vanuatu)
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‘How those dough boys do feed, porridge and cream and peaches, white bread and jam, pancakes, and syrup, and bacon and pukka coffee.’
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The newly liberated British prisoner of war, Eric Barrington, was treated to American hospitality when he managed to cross the Elbe river out of the Russian zone of Germany into the area held by the United States. ‘The sergeant brought out a parcel of cookies from home and the captain a pound box of chocolate creams … a packet of Camels was handed round and we were “gang” happy again.’
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Dinner was meat stew, mashed potatoes, sweet rice and stewed plums. ‘No wonder Yankee POWs miss their rations, a far cry from the bully biscuits’, which Barrington recalled were the predominant foods when he was fighting in North Africa.
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American soldiers were the best fed in the world during the Second World War. As the only country to experience an agricultural as well as an industrial boom, the United States was able to meet the food requirements of its 11.5 million servicemen with ease, and rationing in America had less impact on the structure and content of meals than
in any other country. American soldiers and civilians alike consumed significantly more food than their allies or their enemies. But, if the United States was in an enviable position with regard to its military and economic strength, the government faced the problem that its people had little reason to fight. Lofty ideals such as freedom and democracy and the need to defeat fascism in its German and Japanese forms had little meaning on an everyday level for most Americans. At no point in the war were they fighting to defend their homeland from invasion, unlike the British and Soviets at the beginning of the conflict, or the Germans and Japanese at the end. The natural reluctance of the American government to interfere with the civil liberties of its citizens combined with this vague definition of war aims made it much harder for the US government to mobilize an army and impose restrictions on its civilian population. In the end, most Americans felt that they were fighting to preserve the American way of life and one of the most powerful symbols of this lifestyle came to be the abundance of American food. The superior rations which US troops and ordinary civilians received thus became a powerful signifier of American strength and superiority, not only for the Americans themselves but also for their allies and enemies.