All these stories are great but greatest is Roger Uncle Mike (RUM) ....
2 pegs a day keeps all the problems away...
Cheers ! Phir wohi shaam, wohi rum !! Kya baat hai !!!
ROGER UNCLE MIKE !!
---------
Rum and other spirits had long formed part of the daily issue of the
British soldier on campaigns. Rum was used as a combat motivator, a
medicine, and as part of the reward system. An examination of the multiple
uses of rum in battle, provides insight into the collective lives of these
soldiers. As a nuanced tool in supporting morale, it produced results to
the point that it was perhaps not surprising that more than one soldier
remarked: "If we hadn't had our rum, we would have lost the war."
During the World War I, Canadian infantryman Ralph Bell wrote that, "when
the days shorten, and the rain never ceases; when the sky is ever gray, the
nights chill, and trenches thigh deep in mud and water; when the front is
altogether a beastly place, in fact, we have one consolation. It comes in
gallon jars, marked simply SRD." That SRD was army-issued Services Rum
Diluted or Special Red Demerara (there is some difference of opinion on
what the letters stood for), and it became an institutionalized part of the
ritual of enduring the war.
Life in the trenches (first WW) was nasty and often short. Summer months
were spent in sweltering heat, with rotting corpses and flies. Winter
carried its own trials, with mud and freezing water saturating the
trenches. The squalor broke men down. It was as unnatural a way to live as
having people you have never met attempt to kill you each day. With their
apocalyptic landscapes, battlefields like the Somme in 1916 and
Passchendaele in 1917 were veritable wastelands.
M.A. Searle of the 18th Cdn. Battalion was one of the infantrymen ordered
to hold the dissolving ground at Passchendaele and he frankly recounted:
"Most of us carried on...because of not limitless but more than ordinary
issues of rum."
Fighting in the same mud, Private G. Boyd of the 8th Bn. remembered that
"if we had not had the rum we would have died."
Rum was initially given to men at the dawn "stand-to" and "stand-down" at
dusk. As these were the expected times for an enemy attack, the whole
forward unit was called out to wait with rifles at the ready. If no attack
came, sergeants doled out two ounces of the over-proof rum to each man. The
practice of "stand-to" faded out in the second year of the war when both
sides were aware that the other was on high alert, but the rum ration
remained.
Regulations ordered that it was to be drunk in the presence of an officer
or non-commissioned officer; so no hoarding could be done - any extra rum
was to be poured out into the mud. In reality though, not a lot of rum went
into the dirt, with friends of the NCOs and old hands generally benefiting.
As one official memorandum noted, "the individual man is in all cases free
to refuse the issue of rum if he so desires, but this option is only
exercised in a few instances."
If the soldiers found the rum invaluable, so too did the officers. The
issue of rum to soldiers reinforced the hierarchal nature of the armies
that was so integral to their success. A few lead, many followed. In the
unparalleled slaughter of World War I, discipline and hierarchy were
essential. Soldiers rarely questioned orders, even seemingly suicidal ones.
Punishment and discipline were the main deterrents for potential
troublemakers, but rum also played a role in reinforcing this hierarchy.
Clay rum jars were issued to the battalions, with each quartermaster
dividing it out to the companies. Men who were under punishment were
excluded. Those who were in the good books lined up and the more senior
ranking men moved down the line doling out the precious liquid.
Each soldier waited for his share, all the while aware that it was the
higher-ranking soldier who divided up the portions, giving a little more or
less depending on his whim and fancy. Indeed, the politics of power were
essential in all armies and the rum issue helped to support them.
Rum was also useful as a depressant. While in the trenches, soldiers were
chronically sleep-deprived. One American who served in the Canadian Corps
recounted in a postwar novel: "Sleep, sleep--if only we could sleep. Our
faces become gray. Each face is a different shade of gray. Some are
chalk-colored, some with a greenish tint, some yellow. But all of us are
pallid with fear and fatigue."
The rum ration helped as a sedative, a "warming elixir" as one trench
soldier described it, and its potency could knock men out for hours,
notwithstanding the cold, heat, lice, rats, or the constant pounding of the
big guns.
There was a need to continually shore up defences at night or to protect
the front lines by patrolling and raiding. As a result, extra rum was one
of the few rewards for men who went beyond the call of duty. Patrolling and
raiding in no-man's land were dangerous assignments. These raids, normally
carried out by parties of anywhere between a handful and several hundred,
were designed to win control of the battlefield, gather intelligence,
provide battle craft experience, and, obviously, to kill the enemy. Upon
carrying out their raids, survivors were rewarded with a mug of rum.
Other strenuous tasks like carrying wounded men through miles of mud or
repairing crumbling trenches also made a soldier a candidate for a
late-night liquid issue. Particularly ghastly work like grave digging was
among the worst of the soldier's fatigues. Private Ernest Spillett of the
46th Bn. wrote in a 1917 letter, about having to clear up the corpses from
the battalion's last tour: "I am used to these sights - they don't have to
prime me with rum before I can handle a man; although I have and do
certainly drink it sometimes on those jobs but usually afterwards, to take
the taste of dead men out of my mouth."
After the disastrous campaigns of 1915 in Gallipoli, the British concluded
that the infantry could only pass through the killing ground of no-man's
land by advancing behind massive artillery barrages. Still, the barrages
never annihilated all the defenders, and one machine-gunner was enough to
wreak murderous havoc.
With hours and even days of artillery bombardments "softening" the enemy
defences, the worst time on the front was waiting for zero hour. As minutes
ticked down on synchronized watches, men fiddled with final adjustments,
prayed, and gripped their rifle stocks with sweating hands.
Sergeant Archie McKinnon of the 58th Bn., wrote to his sister that "after a
three-hour artillery bombardment, when you finally get the word 'Over
the-top in one minute,' your heart comes clean out of your mouth." Many
must have felt as if they were waiting for their own executions.
"We were all scared...but there was a job to do and you had to do it. The
thing to do was to try and hide it from the others and not let fellows know
you're scared," recounted Sergeant James Page of the 42nd Bn. That was not
always easy, but George Bell of the 1st Bn. recorded that "a good stiff
'tot' of rum served to buck up the spirits of those wavering."
Officers and NCOs went up and down the forward firing line to calm men with
a greeting and a ladle of rum, beyond the normal ration. Even the generals,
far from the front, realized the importance of giving artificial stimulants
to their warriors. Operational orders for the Canadian Corps' attack on
Vimy Ridge, for instance, declared that "the comfort, efficiency and
fighting value of the troops are greatly increased by the issue of
fortified alcohol...."
Some operations succeeded. while others failed, but all had terrible
casualties. The ebb and flow of battle meant that soldiers attacked and
were, in turn, counter-attacked. The wounded were left behind as flotsam.
During and after battle, those wounded men who could walk struggled to the
rear; but those who could not, called out in pain or waited as
stretcher-bearers braved enemy fire, administering to them in turn.
When soldiers were found, wounds were bound and a shot of rum poured down
throats to lessen the pain. Those who survived the agonizing hours until
they made it back to a casualty clearing station or a field ambulance were
once again given painkillers like rum, port or morphine before a hasty
medical operation.
Yet rum had medicinal uses other than for treating casualties and it was
frequently used in a preventive role. If one is to believe the soldiers,
rum helped to quell the rampant flu and colds that circulated. In addition,
rum was valuable in cases of emotional trauma. One soldier declared in his
postwar memoirs: "There are not one, but numberless occasions, on which a
tot of rum has saved a man from sickness, possibly from a serious illness.
Many a life-long teetotaler has conformed to SRD and taken the first drink
of his life on the battlefields of France, not because he wanted to, but
because he had to."
R. S. Melloy, Armourer Sergeant of the 42nd Battalion, AIF, wrote in his
book "Time Will Tell". (Melloy served in both wars and became a very
successful businessman in Brisbane Queensland). " I was in the wrong place
at the wrong time. I was blown up with a 5.9 shell: the impact parted me
from my gas mask. I was unprotected when Fritz sent over the gas. I inhaled
phosgene. For some days afterwards, my lungs felt as though they were being
continuously ripped apart by barbed wire. Breathing was agony. The medics
in the Casualty Clearing Station gave me a dose of something like phenyle
which they said was to counter the worst effects of the gas. I took it - it
was rum. Shell-shock also got me. The shakes were uncontrollable. Our
medical officer, "Doc" Thompson, said I was a "Blighty" case - pretty bad.
I pleaded with him. I didn't want to leave my battalion. He said I had been
too young, and never should have left home at all. Doc Thompson was like a
kindly uncle. He was obviously fraught and frustrated by the senselessness
of it all. I know this now, looking back. Then, it didn't matter. Didn't
make any difference at all. Here I was, and here I wanted to stay.
The doctor went away, and returned a short time later:
"Here, drink this," he said, not unkindly. I tried to raise the brimming
mug to my lips.
"You can't even hold a mug, let alone a rifle".
"Doc, this is rum. I don't drink."
"Well, you do now. Just drink it!". More firmly, this time. I did as I was
told, and lay down on the stretcher. Twenty-four hours later, I awoke from
a deep sleep. I wasn't shaking. Doc Thompson was standing over me,
grinning: "Right, my fine lad, you're on a special daily issue from now on.
If you insist on staying, that will be your medicine." Well, I have stayed
so long, that I am still around to write this in my nineties! And I have
been taking my medicine - like a good boy - ever since!
That was to prove the least troublesome part of my recuperation. Like the
saying that if one chooses one's parents aright, one will live a long and
healthy life, the same maxim holds true for choosing one's doctor. I was
fortunate that Doctor Thompson came from Bundaberg, the Queensland town
famed for the growth of sugar cane and the production of dark rum. He was
able to prescribe what was actually folk medicine. It worked and I am
grateful. Others also believed that rum actually did have curative powers:
"The gas was phosgene, and we were all sick, choking, when the QM arrived
with rum. We swallowed some and the fumes of the rum and gas made us
horribly sick and we vomited most of the gas out. After a couple of hours
we only had a bad headache and didn't go out of action. Rum is the best
cure for phosgene gas, but no good for other kinds".
Fortifying men with alcohol was not always the best policy, however.
Soldiers high on rum could lose their head on the battlefield and get
themselves unnecessarily wounded or killed. "Under the spell of this
all-powerful stuff," wrote one Canadian, "one almost felt that he could eat
a German, dead or alive, steel helmet and all." For that very reason, rum
was sometimes withheld before battle. Once again, it depended on the
officers and units. That policy did not always sit well with the expectant
soldiers and one draft of rough lumbermen from northern British Columbia
threatened a 54th Bn. officer when he tried to withhold their rum before
battle. They got their rum, and he, as recounted years later in an
interview, learned not to meddle with their ration.
As the issue of rum was left to the prerogative of commanding officers and
medical officers, it placed an important agent in their hands. If the CO
was a teetotaler, then the men might get lime juice and pea soup instead of
rum.
One of the Canadian Corps' most attack-oriented commanders, or a
'fire-eater' in the parlance of the time, was Victor Odlum, commanding
officer of the 7th Bn. and then the 11th Brigade. With a missionary
background, Odlum refused to issue rum to his troops. Nicknamed "Old Lime
Juice" by his men, in the words of E.L.M. Burns, then a junior officer, but
a general in the next war, his temperance stance "got minus zero in the
front-line opinion polls." Mutinous feelings became so strong that Odlum's
superior officer, General David Watson, had to overrule him and institute
the rum ration in February 1917. In an organization where soldiers had
little power, the withholding of rum was important enough for them to raise
their disenfranchised voices.
The importance of rum in the trenches was reinforced by its prominence in
the cultural expression of the soldiers. Replete in song and poem, the rum
ration was an essential component of the unique culture that developed in
the trenches. Some of the choice anecdotes in their memoirs and letters
revolve around rum. An examination of their writings, rather than those of
the senior officers or official historians, shows how references to rum
slip into so many of their poems, trench newspapers and memoirs. Even the
short-form name of the rum itself--SRD--was toyed with by the men. They
jokingly referred to it as Seldom Reaches Destination, Sergeants Rarely
Deliver, Soldiers' Real Delight or Soon Runs Dry. Along with the shared
language of soldiers, rum was a component of their more joyous occasions
like singing. One of the few opportunities that soldiers had to express
themselves, their songs consisted of racy lyrics where women, wine and
humor were intermingled.
A favorite, The Old Barbed Wire, has a stanza that revolves around the
sometimes justified suspicion of the sergeant-major hoarding and cheating
the soldiers out of their rum:
If you want to find the sergeant-major,
I know where he is, I know where he is.
If you want to find the sergeant-major,
I know where he is,
He's boozing up the privates' rum.
I've seen him, I've seen him,
Boozing up the privates' rum,
I've seen him,
Boozing up the privates' rum.
Although all but ignored in the official military records, rum, as well as
the beer canteens, estaminets, cigarettes, letters and trench newspapers,
were essential items in supporting morale for the overseas soldier. It was
these small comforts that were of prime concern to the individual in the
firing line; grand operational plans mattered far less. As we have seen,
rum was a complex and multi-layered tool. Equally important, rum was the
soldiers' tool and without it, the civilians who made up the soldier's
profession--the bankers, clerks and farmers, who put down their pens and
plows for rifles--might well have collapsed more frequently under the
terrible strain of trench warfare.
--
With best wishes
S Chander
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