ARMY BISCUITS
Biscuits! Army biscuits! What a volume of blessings and cursings have been uttered on the subject of biscuits—army biscuits!
What a part they take in our daily routine: the carrying of them, the eating of them, the cursing at them!
Could we find any substitute for biscuits? Surely not! It is easy to think of biscuits without an army, but of an army without biscuits—never.
Biscuits, like the poor, are always with us. Crawling from our earthly dens at the dim dawning of the day, we receive no portion of the dainties which once were ours in the long ago times of effete civilisation; but, instead, we devour with eagerness—biscuit porridge. We eat our meat, not with thankfulness, but with biscuits. We lengthen out the taste of jam—with biscuits. We pound them to powder. We boil them with bully. We stew them in stews. We fry them as fritters. We curse them with many and bitter cursings, and we bless them with few blessings.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! Consider the hardness of them. Remember the cracking of your plate, the breaking of this tooth, the splintering of that. Call to mind how your finest gold crown weakened, wobbled, and finally shrivelled under the terrific strain of masticating Puntley and Chalmer’s No. 5’s.
Think of the aching void where once grew a goodly tooth. Think of the struggle and strain, the crushing and crunching as two molars wrestled with some rocky fragment. Think of the momentary elation during the fleeting seconds when it seemed that the molars would triumphantly blast and scrunch through every stratum of the thrice-hardened rock. Call to mind the disappointment, the agony of mind and body, as the almost victorious grinder missed its footing, slipped, and snapped hard upon its mate, while the elusive biscuit rasped and scraped upon bruised and tender gums.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! Have you, reader, ever analysed with due carefulness the taste of army biscuits? Is it the delicious succulency of ground granite or the savoury toothsomeness of powdered marble? Do we perceive a delicate flavouring of ferro-concretewith just a dash of scraped iron railings? Certainly, army biscuits, if they have a taste, have one which is peculiarly their own. The choicest dishes of civilised life, whether they be baked or boiled, stewed or steamed, fried, frizzled, roasted or toasted, whether they be composed of meat or fish, fruit or vegetable, have not (thank Heaven!) any like taste to that of army biscuits. Army biscuits taste like nothing else on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It is a debatable question indeed whether or not they have the quality of taste. If it be granted that they possess this faculty of stimulating the peripheral extremities of a soldier’s taste-buds, then it must also be conceded that the stimulation is on the whole of an unpleasant sort. In short, that the soldier’s feeling, apart from the joy, the pride, and the satisfaction at his completed achievement in transferring a whole biscuit from his outer to his inner man without undue accident or loss of teeth, is one of pain, unease, and dissatisfaction.
It may seem almost incredible, wholly unbelievable indeed, but armies have marched and fought, made sieges, retired according to plan, stormed impregnable cities, toiled in weariness and painfulness, kept lonely vigils, suffered the extremes of burning heat and of freezing cold, and have, in the last extremity, bled and died, laurel-crowned and greatly triumphant, the heroes of legend and of song, all without the moral or physical, or even spiritual aid of army biscuits.
Agamemnon and the Greeks camped for ten years on the windy plains of Troy without one box of army biscuits. When Xerxes threw his pontoon bridge across the Narrows and marched 1,000,000 men into Greece, his transport included none of Teak Green and Co.’s paving-stones for the hardening of his soldiers’ hearts and the stiffening of their backs. Cæsar subdued Britons, Gauls, and Germans. Before the lines of Dyrrhachium his legions lived many days on boiled grass and such-like delicacies, but they never exercised their jaws upon a rough, tough bit of—army biscuit.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! They are old friends now, and, like all old friends, they will stand much hard wear and tear. Well glazed, they would make excellent tiles or fine flagstones. After the war they will have great scarcity value as curios, as souvenirs which one can pass on from generation to generation, souvenirs which will endure while the Empire stands. If we cannot get physical strength from army biscuits, let us at least catch the great spiritual ideal of enduring hardness, which they are so magnificently fitted to proclaim.
The seasons change. Antwerp falls, Louvain is burned, the tide of battle surges back and forth; new reputations are made, the old ones pass away; Warsaw, Lemberg, Servia, the stern battle lines of Gallipoli, Hindenburg, Mackensen, each name catches our ear for brief moments of time, and then gives way to another crowding it out; but army biscuits are abiding facts, always with us, patient, appealing, enduring. We can move to other theatres, we can change our clothes, our arms, and our generals, but we must have our biscuits, army biscuits, else we are no longer an army.
O. E. Burton,N.Z.M.C.