MORALE BUILDERS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 12, 6 October 1942, Page 7

MORALE BUILDERS

THE ARMY COOK

if you w.cre an Army cook 011 leave, and you met .some of the troops accompanied by their girl friends, Avives or mothers, , which would you rather hear them say: "There's the chap who turns out the great meals TVe told you about"; or "Thai's the bloke who. murders good food"? The Sergeant-Cook Instructor (Paddy to all the camp) at the Dominion's largest inland camp, puts this question up to his trainees. From the start lie instils into them That it is up to them to give the troops the best they can. Army rations are on a liberal scale; with the cooks rests the final result, good or bad. Veteran of the last.- war, and with experience in the N.Z.MF. in the Middle East is this one, Paddy has seen the evolution of Army meals from the halj'-cold dixie of mystery stew ladled out in the tent lines to tile daily roast with two or three vegetables, followed by sweets, and served in a proper messroom hot from the attached kitchens. During the past, year 300' men have been trained as cooks in this large training camp lor service Avith Territorial Units, and out of that, number only three have proved failures. Paddy sorts them out early, and if a man is obviously an unsuitable trainee lie is promptly returned to his unit for a job where he can't do much harm, because a bad cook soon wrecks the morale of a unit., Most of the men who have gone through the cookery course in this camp arc volunteers, although, curiously enough, not one to date was a professional chef or coo'k in civil life. One of Paddy's outstanding pupils was a bacteriologist. After three months' training he was capable of taking the responsibility of sergeant-cook. The new hands start with vegetables, and from that, they work through the simpler dishes to roasts and sweets. All are taught to bake, but in thisdepartment (one of the trickiest of the culinary arts), some are much better than others.

All this training goes on in a cookhouse producing daily meals for a battalion, under ordinary camp conditions. Average battalion strength is. around 800, which involves the handling of SOOlbs of vegetables, 12001bs ol' meat and 800 lbs of bread daily, plus all the other ingredients -which go to make up three man-size meals. The problem of the Army cook is to retain quality while producing in quantity. In the latter stages of their training the new cooks are taken out into the field with troops on manoeuvres, and learn to produce hot meals on the portable oil-burning stoves used on active service. They are also taught, to erect and operate emergency coo'king plants built fropi whatever materials are available. When a man is posted out as a unit cook lie must be capable of do- ] ing the whole job himself, often under difficulties. The usual establishment of cooks to personnel is one for every 50 men, two for 100, three for 150, with an additional cook for every 100 men or part thereof. The standard of Army cooking, both in variety at*l treatment,, has improved, tremendously. Properly trained cooks, capable of taking a, hotel or restaurant job in civil life as a result of Army experience, can play a considerable part in building up the morale of troops. The importance of their job, and the quality expected, is indicate:! by the fact that the cooks are the highest paid personnel among the rank and tile of the Army, receiving an additional 2/(5 a day as extra -duty pay up to, and including the rank of sergeant. What good cooking can achieve is exemplified by the record of the cooikhousc over which the SergeantCook presides. The troops fed from it are Territorial trainees, largely married men, wiio come straight from home amenities, ami are apt to be critical of defects. Yet, over a year, oniy one complaint lias been made about the food to tlie orderly officer who makes a daily cheek of the mess to see thai, the men are being properly fed. The complaint was that there were bones in the fish. Net result was a loss of pres-* tige, not for the vooks, but for the soldier who made the complaint. The troops had too many bright memories of regular, tasty meals to be perturbed by anybody's belated discovery that fish have more than their fair share of vertebrae.