Every American soldier when he went into action carried in the upper left-hand pocket of his blouse a small flat tin—no larger than the pocket Bible which the sob-story writers always place in that same pocket to stop the fatal bullet—bearing on its lid the legend: “U. S. Army Emergency Ration. Not to be opened except by order of an officer, or in extremity.” This was the American equivalent of the “starvation ration” of the European armies. To it many a man caught in a shell-hole between the lines or lost in the Forest of the Argonne owed his life. Its contents represented the results of many experiments and much experience and the combined suggestions of scientists, food experts, and soldiers. The emergency ration consists of three rather dubious-looking cakes of prepared beef combined with a bread compound made of ground cooked wheat, weighing three ounces each, three ounces of chocolate, three-quarters of an ounce of fine salt, and a dram of black pepper. There are almost as many ways of preparing the ration as there are of preparing an egg. The bread-and-meat cakes can be eaten dry—provided one is sufficiently near starvation. When boiled in three pints of water they make a palatable soup, and when the water was obtained, as was frequently the case, from shell-holes and ditches, the pepper and salt served to disguise the muddy flavor. Where water was scarce, only a pint of it was needed to transform the cake into a sort of porridge, something like cornmeal mush, which could be eaten hot or cold or which could be sliced and fried, circumstances and the Germans permitting. The chocolate could be made into a drink by dissolving it in hot water, or it could be eaten as candy.