o be savin' of it. Don't go an' use it all the
first d'y or you'll 'ave to do without yer tea the rest o' the week."

I remembered his emphasis upon this point afterward when I saw men
risking their lives in order to procure firewood. Without his tea Tommy
was a wretched being. I do not remember a day, no matter how serious the
fighting, when he did not find both the time and the means for making it.

Shorty was a Ph.D. in every subject in the curriculum, including domestic
science. In preparing breakfast he gave me a practical demonstration of
the art of conserving a limited resource of fuel, bringing our two
canteens to a boil with a very meager handful of sticks; and while doing
so he delivered an oral thesis on the best methods of food preparation.
For example, there was the item of corned beef--familiarly called
"bully." It was the _piece de resistance_ at every meal with the possible
exception of breakfast, when there was usually a strip of bacon. Now,
one's appetite for "bully" becomes jaded in the course of a few weeks or
months. To use the German expression one doesn't eat it _gern_. But it
is not a question of liking it. One must eat it or go hungry. Therefore,
said Shorty, save carefully all of your bacon grease, and instead of
eating your "bully" cold out of the tin, mix it with bread crumbs and
grated cheese and fry it in the grease. He prepared some in this way, and
I thought it a most delectable dish. Another way of stimulating the
palate was to boil the beef in a solution of bacon grease and water, and
then, while eating it, "kid yerself that it's Irish stew." This second
method of taking away the curse did not appeal to me very strongly, and
Shorty admitted that he practiced such self-deception with very
indifferent success; for after all "bully" was "bully" in whatever form
you ate it.

In addition to this staple, the daily rations consisted of bacon, bread,
cheese, jam, army biscuits, tea, and sugar. Sometimes they received a
tinned meat and vegetable ration, already cooked, and at welcome
intervals fresh meat and potatoes were substituted for corned beef. Each
man had a very generous allowance of food, a great deal more, I thought,
than he could possibly eat. Shorty explained this by saying that
allowance was made for the amount which would be consumed by the rats and
the blue-bottle flies.

There were, in fact, millions of flies. They settled in great swarms
along the walls of the trenches, which