What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the war — John Shaqi
What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the warKelly, Florence Finch
History
What America did : $b A record of achievement in the prosecution of the war
Kelly, Florence Finch
World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
The American soldier’s daily ration consisted of twenty-seven articles
of food, weighing altogether about four and a half pounds and costing
about 50 cents per man, and it had to be ready for him regularly and
promptly every day, wherever he might be. No second grade material
of any kind was bought and constant inspection of raw materials, of
processes and places, of preparation and of army kitchens kept the
food up to the standard demanded. It was bought in enormous quantities
and, in order to stabilize prices in all sections of the country, part
of the supplies was secured through the Food Administration and the
remainder by means of a system of zone buying. During the ten months
from September 1st, 1917, to the end of June, 1918, 225,000,000 pounds
of sugar were required and from the 1917 crop of vegetables and fruits
the army bought and used 75,000,000 cans of tomatoes and 20,000,000
pounds of prunes. From the listed amounts of thirty articles of food
demanded for the subsistence for one year of an army of 3,000,000 men,
the approximate size of the American army before the September draft,
the following items are taken. They will give an idea of the size of
the task which the Quartermasters Corps undertook in the feeding of our
soldiers at home and abroad: Fresh beef, 478,515,000 pounds; bacon,
48,000,000 pounds; potatoes, 782,925,000 pounds; jam, 7,665,000 cans;
flour, 915,000,000 pounds; coffee, 61,320,000 pounds; tea, 7,665,000
pounds; canned pork and beans, 4,000,000 cases; canned tomatoes,
6,000,000 cases; evaporated milk, 2,992,500 cases; butter, 15,330,000
pounds. More than six thousand different packers supplied the canned
vegetables bought for the army in the summer of 1918, approximately
300,000,000 cans, enough to girdle the earth if the cans were laid in
line, end to end.
The necessity of conserving shipping space led to the use of dehydrated
vegetables, of which the Quartermasters Corps in the summer of 1918
contracted for 16,000,000 pounds. The soldiers of the American
Expeditionary Force received a ration of 16 ounces of pure wheat
flour per day each. No wheat saving substitute was used there, for
the reason that field bakers must work swiftly and can not afford to
experiment with flour mixtures. At the training camps in the United
States kitchens were stationary and bakers definitely located and
here the prescribed amount of substitutes was used, with satisfactory
results. The Subsistence Division of the Corps worked out a special
reserve ration for use in the trenches and under first line conditions
in France. It was carried in containers proof against rats, water and
poisoning in gas attacks. Schools were established for army cooks and
bakers, so that only skilled and experienced men should serve the food
from army kitchens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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