War Memoir of Robert Ellwood

Ellwood: The issue on Gallipoli was bully beef in a tin which came from the Argentine and the property of Fray Bentos and he was a count and he was a German in the first place and the second place it was terribly stringy stuff and then we had marmalade and we had cheese and we had tea, and biscuits and the biscuits were about, oh, 3/8″ or more thick and you had to use a stone to break them and they flaked, that’s the only way you could eat them. We used to have, to give us a variation, we’d have amongst a number of us an empty shell case and we’d break the biscuit up into small pieces with a stone or something or the other and we’d put it in this shell case and we’d ram it with the handle of our entrenching tool, to more or less to a powdery state and then we’d mix it with the bully beef and we’d fry it in our mess tins and persuade ourselves we were having rissoles or we’d make a stew of it or something else. Well that’s what we lived on and that it why when we got (there was no such thing as bread, heavens above) that was why when we got to Lemnos and were given a 56lb box of butter, we all just grabbed it in our hands and et it.