Napoleon and Frederick the Great are both credited with the saying ‘an army marches on its stomach’, knowing that troops need adequate nourishment to fight effectively on the battlefield.
However, one of their golden rules for military success appears to have been ignored by British defence chiefs after the number of Army chefs was slashed by almost two-thirds in the last 15 years.
Rather than employing chefs with military training to prepare healthy, wholesome meals for soldiers, the Ministry of Defence now mostly uses commercial contractors to deliver cuisine that many Army members find offensive.
A soldier posted startling images on social media of food served to troops training on a shooting range at Longmoor in Hampshire, calling it ‘the worst I’ve seen in 12 years of service’.
It included a bowl of raw chicken in soup and a meal merely comprising ‘meat water and a potato’.
Another warrant officer said he was ‘appalled’ after getting just a ham and cheese toastie as a meal.
Figures released by the MoD have shown that the number of chefs has plummeted from 2,547 in 2010 to 868 today, a drop of more than 65 percent.
In 2010, the Army comprised some 114,000 full-time personnel. But by last year, this number had dropped to about 75,000.
One former commander said the reduction in the number of Army chefs would ‘seriously damage morale’ and was ‘terribly short-sighted’ of the MoD.
Because they prepared meals for hundreds of soldiers every day in sweltering field kitchens during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army cooks became unsung heroes.
Fresh, hot food prepared by trained chefs was considered essential to morale.
In addition to offering top-brass fine dining, army chefs are highly skilled soldiers who are trained to prepare meals for troops in harsh field kitchens.
With Pay As You Dine, things took a turn for the worse. Contract chefs and cooks, who were chosen based on their lowest offer, took the place of the camp chefs.
The service chefs were then pooled for exercises and operations, before this, they were posted to units that became part of the fabric. They knew who they were cooking for and had rapport with them. All that was lost in a pen stroke, and now this is the outcome.
And all the time migrants are treated with kid gloves and this is how our lads and lasses are looked after – no wonder our youngsters are not interested in a military career anymore.
The migrants would likely be able to provide far nicer cuisine, to be fair. Maybe we ought to hire them? Or perhaps they should serve this rubbish up in Whitehall and Parliament, and see how they like it.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 