Nor were the troops in a condition to successfully cope with the inroads of disease. "Worn out with hardship and incessant shell fire, from which even when in reserve, they were never free,"[N] ill-sustained by a monotonous diet of food--in part of doubtful quality, and always short of sleep and of supplies of water necessary to rest the body and keep it clean; their vitality and powers of resistance to disease were considerably reduced, and they fell an easy prey to the virulent and prolific germs. The army ration consisted of meat, bread, vegetables, and groceries. Meat included tinned and fresh meat and bacon. Bread included ordinary bread, biscuits, and flour. The groceries were tea, sugar, jam (or cheese), pepper and salt, with such alternatives and additions as tinned milk, rice, prunes, curry powder, and raisins--which last were rarely available. The 28th's experience was that, when supplies were available and the weather permitted of them being landed, Argentine chilled beef and baker's bread left little room for complaint. However, the two factors mentioned did not always coincide and the Battalion, for days on end, had to be content with substitutes. The tinned meat ("dog" or "bully beef") was also from Argentine, and had already been dealt with for "extract" besides being extremely salt in flavour. The only way to make it palatable was to fry it up with bacon fat and chopped onions, or boil it again and add rice and curry powder when procurable. Nevinson[O] says that when the Anzac men threw over tins of meat to the Turks in exchange for packets of cigarettes it was a cheap gift, and the enemy returned the messages, "Bully beef non, envoyez milk." Now and again one came across a treasure in the form of a stray tin of a Canadian brand, or of "Maconochie" (a very substantial and nourishing stew), but looked in vain for the well-known Australian and New Zealand products. The bacon, mostly very fat, was known as "lance-corporal bacon," _i.e._, with only one thin streak of lean running through it. This was issued _ad nauseam_. One man expressed his feelings when he said that he would never be able to look a pig in the face again.