There are one or two features of interest as regards the rationing worthy of record.
Owing to the heat and the rapidity with which fresh meat went bad, considerable difficulty was experienced in rationing convoys, which might be absent several days from main rationing bases. No tinned meat was available, and after several experiments a successful method of dry-salting and sun-drying mutton was found. Meat thus treated proved very palatable when soaked and cooked, and kept even in the hottest weather for several weeks.
Jam was made from fruit purchased locally, and stored in earthenware jars, a jam ration being issued to the men the whole time they were in Persia. Crushed wheat proved excellent for porridge.
This excellent result was mainly due to the initiative and hard work of the Brigade Quartermaster, Captain Lefroy and his staff.
To sum up, the Brigade, in addition to entirely supporting its own personnel in rations, munitions, and stores of all kinds, afforded very considerable assistance in transport to Dunsterforce. It maintained all armoured cars which had arrived from England, working over 1,000 miles from railhead, and had all available personnel in the fighting-line as a machine-gun company at Baku, some 800 miles from railhead. The whole time it was solely dependent on its own efforts.
The work was entirely due to the magnificent body of officers and men forming the unit, who have worked throughout unsparingly in whatever duty they have been called upon to perform. The gallantry shown by the men of the machine-gun company in the fight of August 26th, when they stayed with their guns to the last, is enhanced by the fact that practically all these men had under eight months' service in the Army.
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