CHAPTER I.
SUBSISTENCE.
When the American soldier went to war against Germany he took his appetite with him. The task of keeping that appetite satisfied with good food (and the soldier, therefore, contented and well) fell to the Quartermaster General. The average American soldier at the end of the fighting in 1918 is said to have weighed 12 pounds more than he did when the Selective-Service Act or his own enlistment brought him into the Army. This is the complete testimonial to the quality and quantity of the food served to the American troops in 1917 and 1918. Assuming 3,700,000 to have been the greatest number of Americans under arms, this average increase in weight means that the beans and bacon and fresh meat of the American Army ration were transmogrified into some 45,000,000 pounds of Yankee brawn to be the basis of untold resources of health and energy during the coming quarter of a century.
Consider these millions of soldiers as one composite, gigantic man in khaki; compress the war period into a single hour, the dinner hour; and it will be seen that the American fighter consumed what might be called a sizeable meal. Let us say that he started off with the main course. The roast of beef weighed over 800,000,000 pounds. It was flanked by a rasher of bacon weighing 150,000,000 pounds. Over 1,000,000,000 pounds of flour went into the loaf of bread, while to spread the bread was there a lump of butter weighing 17,500,000 pounds and another lump of oleomargarine weighing 11,000,000 pounds. As a side dish this giant had over 150,000,000 pounds of baked beans, half of these coming in cans ready baked and flavored with tomato sauce. The potatoes weighed 487,000,000 pounds. To add gusto to his appetite there were 40,000,000 pounds of onions. Then scattered over the table were such items as 150,000,000 cans of corn, peas, and string beans; while the salad contained 50,000,000 cans of salmon and 750,000 tins of sardines. Then there was a huge bowl of canned tomatoes, nearly 190,000,000 tins supplying its contents. For dessert he had 67,000,000 pounds of prunes and 40,000,000 pounds of evaporated peaches and apples. The sugar for sweetening various dishes weighed 350,000,000 pounds. He washed it all down with a draft made of 75,000,000 pounds of coffee thinned with 200,000,000 cans of evaporated milk. The bill for the meal, paid by the American public, amounted to $727,092,430.44, this figure to December 1, 1918.
In supplying such vast quantities of food, scientific attention was concentrated upon the details of the effort. At the time the armistice was signed the American troops in France were eating about 9,000,000 pounds of food every day. Never before in history had any nation been compelled to send subsistence so great a distance to so many men. It was not possible to ask France and England to divide their food supplies, as they were already rationing their civilian populations. We were required to purchase practically all food in America and transport it nearly 5,000 miles. Ships were relatively scarce. There was a strong bid for every inch of tonnage space. The tonnage allotted to subsistence must be filled with sufficient food not only to supply the immediate consumption, but to overcome losses due to the sinking of ships and the possible capture of base depots. These contingencies required two pounds of food to be shipped where one would ordinarily be sent; yet because of the shortage of ships the subsistence authorities were asked to pack these two pounds into almost the space of one. The result was foods in forms never before known by American soldiers and in some cases never before known at all—such forms as dehydrated vegetables, boneless beef, and the so-called shankless beef. Trench warfare made new demands for food. Calls came for such rare articles as soluble coffee or the wheat-and-meat cake of the emergency ration.
These problems were solved only by the assistance of the American food industry. In numerous instances new factories, or even whole new types of food manufacture, were built up as rapidly as three shifts of men could work and money accomplish results.
The cost of food rates high among the war costs of 1917 and 1918. Back in 1897 the average meal in the Army cost about 4 cents, and the daily three meals 13 cents. At the end of 1918 the cost of the ration was approximately 48 cents. The advance was not all due to the advance in living costs. Much of it was on account of the improved standards of the ration. In 1916 Congress appropriated $10,000,000 to feed the Army; the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1918, brought an appropriation of $830,000,000 for the same purpose.
The American fighting man of 1917-18 was a good feeder. He ate nearly three-quarters of a ton of food each year, or over ten times his own weight. Without counting any transportation costs or the expense of handling at all, each man's yearly supply of food cost more than $165. In spite of the most rigid and painstaking economies in the purchase of this subsistence the American people were paying at the peak of Army expansion more than $2,500,000 per day to feed the troops.
The distance of the American Expeditionary Forces from the source of their food supplies required that their food be largely purchased in nonperishable forms. That is, meats must be cured, meats and vegetables tinned, vegetables and fruits dried. We literally paved the way to Berlin with tin cans. The various foods put up in tins and purchased during the year 1918 totaled over 1,000,000,000 cans, or enough, standing on end, to make a road wide enough and long enough for a force of men marching in columns of four to go from the port of embarkation at Hoboken, N. J., to the heart of Germany. The largest closing machine can seal 240 tin cans per minute. If such a machine could be operated eight hours a day seven days a week, it would take it 23 years and 6 months to seal these tins.
During the spring of 1918, when the demand for men in France resulted in reducing the available tonnage for supplies, the cry came from France to cut every nonessential. As a result most of the canned vegetables and fruits, including peas, corn, sweet potatoes, asparagus, pineapple, pears, and apples were stricken from the list of food supplies for the American Expeditionary Forces.