WHAT SOLDIERS EAT.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 201, 18 August 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHAT SOLDIERS EAT.

HOW THE NATIONS FEED THEJIt TJioors. The principal meal of tlic Russian peasant soldier cousists of "stchee." a sort of cross between a gruel and a soup, the chief ingredients of which are cabbages, potatoes, oatmeal, and fat meat—preferably podk. These are ail boiled together with salt and other nourishing, and by no means unpalatable dish. This constitutes his usual midday meal, and it is repeated in the evening for supper. For breakfast he takes, when he can get it, a big bowl of "kasha"—dry buckwheat and cold sour milk. The staple diet of the " Turcos" -the splendid French-Algerian coloured troops who are lighting so magnificently in Alsace —is "cous-cous," which is merely boiled semolina. It is eaten cither pla'n, or with the addition of vegetables, and very occasionally a 'itlle mutton or goat-flesh may he added : but the semolina is the mainstay. On this a Turco will march forty or more miles a day, carving a weight of from e'ghtv to one. hundred pounds, more than is borne by any other soldier anywhere. Ttal : an soldiers are also splendid marchers, and they ,too, exist largely on a farinaceous diet; macaroni, spaghetti, and so on. Th.ey are also very partial to fruit, which is issued together with wine and Tigars, as part of their regular rations whenever possible. No German considers his daily menu complete without a sausage of some kind or other, and the " higher'' it is as regards flavour the better he likes it. The mainstay of the French soldier conssts of his belov.ed "soup," as he calls it, but which is really a thick nourishing stew, made from meat, potatoes, and various other "vegetables.