COCOA RATIONS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 200, 7 January 1942, Page 6

COCOA RATIONS

member of the Civil Defence Forces

ARE HIDDEN AWAY IN BRITAIN'S

SECRET LARDER

Britain's fighting forces and the men and Avomen on civil defence are consuming a very large proportion of the £4,000,000 of cocoa now being imported each year from the West Coast of Africa.

The Royal Navy, Avhich first took to cocoa a century ago, absorbs 300 tons of it. They have their own traditional method of preparing the beans Avhich are cleaned, roasted, crushed and made into big slabs in their own kitchens. The cocoa, or "ki" as they call it on the loAver decks, is scraped down from these slabs in the cook's galley for liquid use and on the night Avatches both officers and men drink it round the guns and torpedo tubes.

During the battle of the Plate galley stall's kept up a supply of hot cocoa throughout the whole action and while Crete was being evacuated under heavy bombardment from land and air the galley stall of one warship sent a constant ilow of coco;' to more than one thousand men . The. ronvov service also absorbs goodly •juanlities and cocoa appears, thrice a Aveck oil the Army diet sheet for supocr. It is included in every parcel sent to British prisoners of war and during l!ie Battle of London an-i the bombing of British, eiiies people in air-raid shelters

is allowed three-sixteenths of an ounce of cocoa a day. It comes to them in 71b tins from the nation's "Shadow Larder" which has 1,000,000 rations stored secretly throughout the country.