I am currently reading a fascinating book: Frontline Cookbook: Battlefield Recipes from the Second World War, edited by Andrew Robertshaw in association with the Royal Logistics Corps Museum (Spellmount, 2012). In a section on the origins of the Army Catering Corps (p.26), I came across this:
One Development within the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) [note: the ASC did not become ‘Royal’ until 1918] was a new appointment for officers. Their responsibility was catering and by January 1916 there were fourteen Catering Instructors who were distributed throughout the UK. By 1918 the number of instructors had expanded to forty and although the main Army School of Cookery was at Aldershot there were schools of instruction in all the theatres of war. These included Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Salonika and, from 1918, Russia. After the Armistice, the Catering Section was gradually disbanded and by June 1923 there was a single Inspector of Catering at the War Office.
This sent me to the online catalogue of The National Archives at Kew to find the official war diary of this school of instruction in Salonika and here it is:
You will note that it is listed as ‘Army School of Cookery’ from August 1917, alongside some other interesting schools of instruction and lines of communication troops. Of course, war diaries from the Macedonian campaign have not been digitised so, unless you want to pay for this to be done, you will need to visit Kew to see it. It’s a neglected subject that probably warrants further investigation.
It’s worth mentioning that Andrew Robertshaw has also written a volume on the First World War – Feeding Tommy: Battlefield Recipes from the First World War (Spellmount, 2013). Perversely I am reading them in reverse order. The Society has been given some collections of photos belonging to ASC soldiers in the campaign, which include images of cooks at work, so I’m saving this book for when I start investigating these.
An Indian cook grinding pepper in a Turkish shell case. The shell was fired into their camp when stationed in Egypt. Salonika, March, 1917. [click on image to see full size] © IWM (Q 32818)
Finally, I found this comment (p.91) which I am sure would have applied equally to the soldiers of 1914-18:
… British servicemen do not respond to a diet that lacks tea. So great was the British need to furnish their troops with an adequate supply of tea throughout the war that during one season in 1942-43 the Ministry of Defence bought India’s entire crop of tea for use in the armed forces.
Anyone fancy a cuppa?