Who ate better in the trenches of World War I
Which soldier fights better - well-fed or hungry? The First World War did not give an unambiguous answer to this important question. On the one hand, indeed, the soldiers of Germany, which ultimately lost, were fed much more modestly than the armies of most opponents. At the same time, during the war, it was the German troops that more than once inflicted crushing defeats on armies that ate better and even exquisitely.
Patriotism and calories
History knows many examples when hungry and exhausted people, mobilizing the strength of their spirit, defeated a well-fed and well-equipped, but devoid of passionarity enemy. A soldier who understands what he is fighting for, why it is not a pity to give his life for it, can fight without a kitchen with hot meals … Day, two, a week, even a month. But when the war drags on for years, you will no longer be full of passionarity - you cannot deceive physiology forever. The most ardent patriot will simply die of hunger and cold. Therefore, the governments of most countries preparing for war usually approach the issue in the same way: a soldier must be fed, and fed well, at the level of a worker engaged in hard physical labor. What were the soldiers rations of different armies during the First World War?
At the beginning of the twentieth century, an ordinary soldier of the Russian army relied on such a daily diet: 700 grams of rye crackers or a kilogram of rye bread, 100 grams of cereals (in the harsh conditions of Siberia - even 200 grams), 400 grams of fresh meat or 300 grams of canned meat (front company per day Thus, it was necessary to deliver at least one bull, and a year - a whole herd of hundreds of heads of cattle), 20 grams of butter or lard, 17 grams of puff flour, 6, 4 grams of tea, 20 grams of sugar, 0, 7 grams of pepper. Also, a soldier was supposed to have about 250 grams of fresh or about 20 grams of dried vegetables per day (a mixture of dried cabbage, carrots, beets, turnips, onions, celery and parsley), which went mainly to soup. Potatoes, in contrast to our days, even 100 years ago in Russia were not yet so widespread, although when they arrived at the front, they were also used in the preparation of soups.
Russian field cuisine. Photo: Imperial War Museums
During religious fasts, meat in the Russian army was usually replaced by fish (mostly not sea fish, as today, but river fish, often in the form of dried smelt) or mushrooms (in cabbage soup), and butter - with vegetable. Soldered cereals in large quantities were added to the first courses, in particular, to cabbage soup or potato soup, from which porridge was cooked. In the Russian army 100 years ago, spelled, oatmeal, buckwheat, barley, and millet cereals were used. Rice, as a "fixing" product, was distributed by the quartermasters only in the most critical conditions.
The total weight of all products eaten by a soldier per day was approaching two kilograms, the calorie content was more than 4300 kcal. Which, by the way, was more satisfying than the diet of the soldiers of the Red and Soviet Army (20 grams more in proteins and 10 grams more in fats). And for tea - so the Soviet soldier received four times less - only 1.5 grams per day, which was clearly not enough for three glasses of normal tea leaves, familiar to the "Tsarist" soldier.
Rusks, corned beef and canned food
In the conditions of the outbreak of war, the rations of soldiers were initially increased even more (in particular, for meat - up to 615 grams per day), but a little later, as it entered a protracted phase and resources dried up even in then-agrarian Russia, they were again reduced, and fresh meat was increasingly replaced by corned beef. Although, in general, up to the revolutionary chaos of 1917, the Russian government at the very least managed to maintain the food standards for soldiers, only the quality of food deteriorated.
The point here was not so much the devastation of the village and the food crisis (the same Germany suffered from it many times more), but in the eternal Russian misfortune - the undeveloped network of roads along which the quartermasters had to drive herds of bulls to the front and bring hundreds of thousands of tons through potholes flour, vegetables and canned food. In addition, the refrigeration industry was in its infancy at that time (carcasses of cows, vegetables and grain had to be somehow preserved in colossal volumes from damage, stored and transported). Therefore, situations like bringing rotten meat to the battleship Potemkin were a frequent occurrence and not always only because of the malicious intent and theft of the intendants.
It was not easy even with soldier's bread, although in those years it was baked without eggs and butter, from only flour, salt and yeast. But in peacetime conditions, it was cooked in bakeries (in fact, in ordinary Russian ovens) located in places of permanent deployment of units. When the troops moved to the front, it turned out that giving a soldier a kilogram loaf each in the barracks was one thing, but in an open field it was quite another. The modest field kitchens could not bake a large number of loaves; it remained at best (if the rear services were not "lost" at all along the way) to distribute rusks to the soldiers.
Soldier's crackers of the early twentieth century are not the usual golden croutons for tea, but, roughly speaking, dried pieces of the same simple loaf. If you eat only them for a long time, people began to get sick with vitamin deficiency and a serious disorder of the gastrointestinal system.
The harsh "dry" life in the field was somewhat brightened up by canned food. For the needs of the army, the then Russian industry already produced several varieties of them in cylindrical "cans": "fried beef", "beef stew", "cabbage soup with meat", "peas with meat". Moreover, the quality of the "royal" stew differed in an advantageous way from the Soviet, and even more so the current canned food - 100 years ago, only the highest grade meat from the back of the carcass and shoulder blade was used for production. Also, when preparing canned food during the First World War, the meat was pre-fried, and not stewed (that is, putting it in jars raw and boiling along with the jar, as today).
World War I culinary recipe: soldiers' cabbage soup
A bucket of water is poured into the boiler, about two kilograms of meat, a quarter of a bucket of sauerkraut are thrown there. Groats (oatmeal, buckwheat or barley) are added to taste "for density", for the same purposes, pour one and a half cups of flour, salt, onion, pepper and bay leaf to taste. It is brewed for about three hours.
Vladimir Armeev, "Brother"
French cuisine
Despite the outflow of many workers from agriculture and the food industry, developed agrarian-industrial France during the First World War managed to avoid hunger. Only a few "colonial goods" were lacking, and even these interruptions were of an unsystematic nature. A well-developed road network and the positional nature of hostilities made it possible to quickly deliver food to the front.
However, as historian Mikhail Kozhemyakin writes, “the quality of French military food at different stages of the First World War varied significantly. In 1914 - early 1915, it clearly did not meet modern standards, but then the French quartermasters caught up with and even surpassed their foreign colleagues. Probably not a single soldier during the Great War - not even an American one - ate as well as the French.
Long-standing traditions of French democracy have played a major role here. It was because of her, paradoxically, that France entered the war with an army that did not have centralized kitchens: it was believed that it was not good to force thousands of soldiers to eat the same thing, to impose a military cook on them. Therefore, each platoon was given their own sets of kitchen utensils - they said that the soldiers liked to eat more, what they would cook for themselves from a set of food and parcels from home (they contained cheeses, and sausages, and canned sardines, fruits, jam, sweets, biscuits). And each soldier is his own cook.
As a rule, ratatouille or another type of vegetable stew, bean soup with meat, and the like were prepared as main dishes. However, the natives of each region of France strove to bring to the field cooking something specific from the richest recipes of their province.
French field cuisine. Photo: Library of Congress
But such democratic "amateur performance" - romantic bonfires in the night, kettles boiling on them - turned out to be fatal in the conditions of positional war. German snipers and artillery gunners immediately began to focus on the lights of the French field kitchens, and the French army suffered initially unjustified losses because of this. The military supplies, reluctantly, had to unify the process and also introduce mobile field kitchens and braziers, cooks, food carriers from the near rear to the front line, standard food rations.
The ration of French soldiers since 1915 was of three categories: regular, reinforced (during battles) and dry (in extreme situations). The usual one consisted of 750 grams of bread (or 650 grams of crackers-biscuits), 400 grams of fresh beef or pork (or 300 grams of canned meat, 210 grams of corned beef, smoked meat), 30 grams of fat or lard, 50 grams of dry concentrate for soup, 60 grams of rice or dried vegetables (usually beans, peas, lentils, "freeze-dried" potatoes or beets), 24 grams of salt, 34 grams of sugar. The strengthened one provided for an "addition" of another 50 grams of fresh meat, 40 grams of rice, 16 grams of sugar, 12 grams of coffee.
All this, in general, resembled a Russian ration, the differences consisted in coffee instead of tea (24 grams per day) and alcoholic beverages. In Russia, a half-drink (just over 70 grams) of alcohol to soldiers before the war was supposed to be done only on holidays (10 times a year), and with the outbreak of the war, a dry law was introduced altogether. The French soldier, meanwhile, drank heartily: at first he was supposed to have 250 grams of wine a day, by 1915 - already a half-liter bottle (or a liter of beer, cider). By the middle of the war, the rate of alcohol was increased by another one and a half times - up to 750 grams of wine, so that the soldier radiated optimism and fearlessness as much as possible. Those who wished were also not forbidden to buy wine with their own money, which is why in the trenches in the evening there were soldiers who did not knit bast. Also, tobacco (15-20 grams) was included in the daily ration of a French soldier, while in Russia donations were collected for tobacco for soldiers by benefactors.
It is noteworthy that only the French were entitled to an enhanced wine ration: for example, soldiers from the Russian brigade that fought on the Western Front in the La Courtine camp were given only 250 grams of wine each. And for the Muslim soldiers of the French colonial troops, wine was replaced with additional portions of coffee and sugar. Moreover, as the war dragged on, coffee became increasingly scarce and began to be replaced by substitutes from barley and chicory. The front-line soldiers compared them in taste and smell to "dried goat shit."
The dry ration of the French soldier consisted of 200-500 grams of biscuits, 300 grams of canned meat (they were transported already from Madagascar, where the whole production was specially established), 160 grams of rice or dried vegetables, at least 50 grams of concentrate soup (usually chicken with pasta or beef with vegetables or rice - two briquettes of 25 grams each), 48 grams of salt, 80 grams of sugar (packaged in two portions in sachets), 36 grams of coffee in compressed tablets and 125 grams of chocolate. The dry ration was also diluted with alcohol - a half-liter bottle of rum was issued to each squad, which was ordered by the sergeant.
French writer Henri Barbusse, who fought in the First World War, described the food on the front lines as follows: less cooked, or with potatoes, more or less peeled, floating in a brown slurry, covered with spots of solidified fat. There was no hope of getting any fresh vegetables or vitamins."
French gunners at lunch. Photo: Imperial War Museums
In the quieter sectors of the front, the soldiers were more likely to be satisfied with the food. In February 1916, corporal of the 151st Line Infantry Regiment Christian Bordeschien wrote in a letter to his relatives: beans and once a vegetable stew. All this is quite edible and even tasty, but we scold the cooks so that they do not relax."
Instead of meat, fish could be issued, which usually caused extreme displeasure not only among mobilized Parisian gourmets - even soldiers recruited from ordinary peasants complained that they were thirsty after salted herring, and it was not easy to get water at the front. After all, the surrounding area was plowed up by shells, littered with feces from a long stay at one point of entire divisions and uncleared bodies of the dead, from which cadaveric poison dripped. All this smelled like trench water, which had to be filtered through cheesecloth, boiled and then filtered again. To fill the soldier's canteens with clean and fresh water, military engineers even escorted pipelines to the front line, which was supplied with water using marine pumps. But the German artillery often destroyed them too.
Armies of rutabagas and biscuits
Against the background of the triumph of French military gastronomy and even Russian, simple but satisfying catering, and the German soldier ate more depressing and meager. Fighting on two fronts, a relatively small Germany in a protracted war was doomed to malnutrition. Neither the purchase of food in neighboring neutral countries, nor the robbery of the occupied territories, nor the state monopoly on grain purchases helped.
Agricultural production in Germany in the first two years of the war was almost halved, which had a catastrophic effect on the supply of not only the civilian population (hungry "rutabaga" winters, death of 760 thousand people from malnutrition), but also the army. If before the war the food ration in Germany averaged 3500 calories per day, then in 1916-1917 it did not exceed 1500-1600 calories. This real humanitarian catastrophe was man-made - not only because of the mobilization of a huge part of the German peasants into the army, but also because of the extermination of pigs in the first year of the war as "eaters of scarce potatoes." As a result, in 1916, the potatoes were not born due to bad weather, and there was already a catastrophic shortage of meat and fats.
German field cuisine. Photo: Library of Congress
Surrogates became widespread: rutabaga replaced potatoes, margarine - butter, saccharin - sugar, and grains of barley or rye - coffee. The Germans, who had a chance to compare the famine in 1945 with the famine of 1917, then recalled that in the First World War it was harder than in the days of the collapse of the Third Reich.
Even on paper, according to the standards that were observed only in the first year of the war, the daily ration of a German soldier was less than in the armies of the Entente countries: 750 grams of bread or cookies, 500 grams of lamb (or 400 grams of pork, or 375 grams of beef or 200 grams canned meat). Also relied on 600 grams of potatoes or other vegetables or 60 grams of dried vegetables, 25 grams of coffee or 3 grams of tea, 20 grams of sugar, 65 grams of fat or 125 grams of cheese, pate or jam, tobacco of your choice (from snuff to two cigars a day) …
German dry rations consisted of 250 grams of cookies, 200 grams of meat or 170 grams of bacon, 150 grams of canned vegetables, 25 grams of coffee.
At the discretion of the commander, alcohol was also issued - a bottle of beer or a glass of wine, a large glass of brandy. In practice, commanders usually did not allow soldiers to drink alcohol on the march, but, like the French, they were allowed to moderately drink in the trenches.
However, by the end of 1915, all the norms of even this ration existed only on paper. The soldiers were not even given bread, which was baked with the addition of rutabagas and cellulose (ground wood). Rutabaga replaced almost all the vegetables in the ration, and in June 1916 meat began to be issued irregularly. Like the French, the Germans complained about the disgusting - dirty and poisonous - water near the front line. Filtered water was often not enough for people (the flask held only 0.8 liters, and the body required up to two liters of water per day), and especially for horses, and therefore the strictest ban on drinking unboiled water was not always observed. From this there were new, completely ridiculous diseases and deaths.
The British soldiers who had to carry food by sea (and German submarines operated there) or buy food locally, in those countries where hostilities were going on (and there they did not like to sell it even to the allies - there was hardly enough). In total, over the years of the war, the British managed to transport more than 3.2 million tons of food to their units fighting in France and Belgium, which, despite the amazing figure, was not enough.
Officers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Yorkshire Regiment dine on the side of the road. Ypres, Belgium. 1915 year. Photo: Imperial War Museums
The British soldier's ration consisted, in addition to bread or biscuits, of only 283 grams of canned meat and 170 grams of vegetables. In 1916, the meat norm was also reduced to 170 grams (in practice, this meant that the soldier did not receive meat every day, the parts put in reserve were only for every third day and the calorie norm of 3574 calories per day was no longer observed).
Like the Germans, the British also began to use rutabaga and turnip additives when baking bread - there was a shortage of flour. Horse meat was often used as meat (horses killed on the battlefield), and the vaunted English tea more and more often resembled the "taste of vegetables". True, so that the soldiers did not get sick, the British thought of pampering them with a daily portion of lemon or lime juice, and adding nettles and other semi-edible weeds growing near the front to the pea soup. Also, a British soldier was supposed to be given a pack of cigarettes or an ounce of tobacco per day.
Briton Harry Patch, the last World War I veteran who died in 2009 at the age of 111, recalled the hardships of trench life: “Once we were pampered with plum and apple jam for tea, but biscuits were" dog biscuits. " The cookie tasted so hard that we threw it away. And then, out of nowhere, two dogs came running, whose owners were killed by shells, and began to bite for our cookies. They fought for life and death. I thought to myself: "Well, I don't know … Here are two animals, they are fighting for their lives. And we, two highly civilized nations. What are we fighting for here?"
World War I recipe: potato soup.
A bucket of water is poured into the cauldron, two kilograms of meat and about half a bucket of potatoes, 100 grams of fat (about half a pack of butter) are put. For density - half a glass of flour, 10 glasses of oatmeal or pearl barley. Add parsley, celery and parsnip roots to taste.
