On a whim, I thought it would be fun to share an article (updated) I wrote for Food History News,

just before the appearance of the final issue of that wonderful newsletter after twenty years

publication (fourteen years of which Sandy Oliver was nice enough to include my contributions).

Be that as it may, below we cover Thanksgiving through the New Year, 1777 to 1968, with some

meals to cringe at and a few to make you salivate, reminding us how fortunate we are and how much

we owe to American soldiers past and present, grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers (and

grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and sisters). And, in appreciation of all our loved ones, near and far ...

Cheers,

John

(For more on Civil War celebrations, see http://www.libertyrifles.org/research/ )

_____________________________

"Happy New Year, you guys."

A Soldier's Holiday

John U. Rees

The holidays meant (and mean) a lot to soldiers no matter what their duty; and an

important aspect of any celebration was the possibility of a special meal to fill the belly and

the opportunity for feeling some small connection with homes left behind. The American

soldier's holiday season over the years proved a curious admixture of hunger and bounty,

sadness and nostalgia, cheer and comradeship, with a healthy dose of humor thrown in for

good measure.

Continental Army non-commissioned officers eating a boiled dinner inside their tent. For the

December 18 1777 Congressional thanks giving day some soldiers were given a special issue of

rice and vinegar. No holiday meal would have been served for Christmas, a little-celebrated

day in British North America and the early United States.

While our modern-day Thanksgiving was not yet a holiday during the American

Revolution, Congressionally declared thanksgivings were intermittently prompted by good

news or used to entreat God's beneficence in behalf of the patriot cause. In 1777 the United

States government "recommended ... that Thursday the 18 December ... be set apart for

solemn thanksgiving and praise ..." Besides religious services some special foods were

procured. Private Joseph Martin noted the issue on that occasion to "each and every man

[of] half a gill of rice and a tablespoonful of vinegar!!" Connecticut Surgeon’s Mate

Jonathan Todd wrote to his father on 25 December 1777, “Can assure you that I never

saw A Christmas when I had no other Covering than Tow Cloth before - On the Day

appointed for the Continental Thanksgiving We drew 1/2 Gill of Rice pr. man which with

Beef & Flower were the dainties of our Feast …” Surgeon Albigence Waldo was more

fortunate: "December 18 - Universal Thanksgiving - a Roasted pig at Night."1

Christmas in General George Washington's army was apt to be noted in passing, but

generally went uncelebrated. Lt. Samuel Armstrong, 8th Massachusetts Regiment, noted of

Yuletide 1777,

Thursday 25th: Christmas Day. We was without provisions therefore I was sent out to

procure some [for the company], but could not get Enough 'till three or four in the afternoon,

when I got [49 wt.] of Salt Beef & 110 wt. of fresh Beef and two hundred & a half of flower

and as soon as I returned, I was call'd out to go upon Scout & did not return 'till about 10

OC. in the Evening. This was my Christmas frolick.2

New Year's tended to be a more noteworthy occasion, though special foods were often

unobtainable. Surgeon Waldo was able to write on 31 December 1777, "We got some

Spirits and finish'd the Year with a good Drink & thankfull hearts in our new Hutt ..." The

next year Private Martin recalled moving into his newly-built hut with "nothing

extraordinary, either of eatables or drinkables, to keep a new year or housewarming."3

Civil War soldiers were more likely to mark Christmas in a special way due to altered

attitudes towards that holiday, partly influenced by the large immigrant population. In winter

quarters on the lower Potomac, Private Alfred Bellard, 5th New Jersey Volunteers, recalled

that on

Christmas Day [1861], Co. H of our Regt. were well supplied with good things as their

friends had sent them out about 18 boxes containing plenty of poultry and various other

good things, making the mouths of the less fortunate companys water. As I received a box

myself about this time it did not affect me quite so bad as some of the rest. In order to make

it look as much like Christmas as possible, a small tree was stuck up in front of our tent,

decked off with hard tack and pork, in lieu of cakes, oranges, etc.4

Federal Lieutenant Eugene Carter wrote his parents that same year, "Christmas Eve ... I

know that my company loves me, and I have been made sure of the fact by receiving a very

large, ornamental fruit cake, with a respectful note ... I give my company a Christmas dinner

to-morrow, consisting of turkey, oysters, pies, apples, etc.; no liquors."5

In 1862 Lieutenant Carter’s brother Walter, serving with the 22nd Massachusetts

Volunteers, noted from "Camp near Falmouth," Virginia, on 27 November, that after

visiting with Eugene (who served with a regiment of regular troops), "We came away

loaded with hardtack which, with our rations drawn now, makes us well off ... On our way

home we struck the Thirty-fifth (Mass.) ... I ate supper with Haze Goodrich. It was my

Thanksgiving feast; very unexpected I assure you; it consisted of sardines, chicken soup,

flapjacks, hard bread and coffee." Separated from his regiment and friends due to illness,

Asa Spencer, a nine-month soldier in the 136th Pennsylvania Volunteers, worked as a clerk

in Columbian Hospital near the nation's capitol. One can imagine the effect a Christmas

1862 dinner had on his morale; the repast consisted of "onions, turnips, pototoes, apples,

oranges, oyster soup, mince pie, bread, cheese, cranberry sauce, Ale, and Roasted Turkey

and some other fixings that have slipped my mind." Spencer compared that meal to the usual

fare for "a soldier who had been in the habit of living on hard crackers garrisoned by

worms."6

“Thanksgiving in camp sketched Thursday 28th 1861,” Alfred R. Waud, artist

Accounts of Christmas 1863, Thanksgiving 1864, and the New Year of 1865 are further

evidence for the vicissitudes of army life. New York soldiers’ letters were often published in

the New York Sunday Mercury. The 3 January 1864 issue contained an account from a

member of the 71st New York Volunteers: “Camp near Brandy Station, Va., Dec. 28 [1863]

… Christmas passed away the same as any other day, in the Army, with our fat pork and

hard tack for dinner, with a little bean soup, to satisfy our appetite, and a half gill of whiskey

for a break-down.”7 By contrast the following Thanksgiving was a marvel for scores of New

York soldiers (New York Sunday Mercury, 4 December 1864):

Fort Sedgwick, near Petersburg, Va., Nov. 27 [1864] … The New York troops enjoyed their

Thanksgiving dinner hugely. The material, which they hastily packed into our stomachs, far

surpassed their most sanguine ideas of the feast. In fact, the good people of the North, who

so graciously remembered the soldiers, and got the affair up for them, have an abundance of

thanks. Our bill of fare, in particular, ran thus: Roast turkey, d[itt]o. chicken, pound cake,

ginger do., jellies, apples, pies, onions, potatoes, etc. Considering the magnitude of the

undertaking, and the difficulties surrounding it, it could not have been gotten up better. Our

only regret is, that our days of thanksgiving are not so numerous as our battles.8

For Corporal Daniel Chisholm, 116th Pennsylvania Volunteers, the final New Year of the

war was quietly appreciated:

Sunday, Jany 1st, 1865 The New year came in and found us near Yellow house Va. Our

camp ground is covered with four inches of snow, we have warm quarters and are very

comfortably situated. … Our New Years dinner consists of hard tack and Salt Pork with a

cup of very strong coffee. Abe Moore of 140th P.V. was here for tea.9

As 1864 drew to a close General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia huddled in

their trenches at Petersburg, where prospects for both the Southern cause and a bountiful

holiday were bleak. A Tennessee soldier wrote that December,

The Boys are all thinking pretty strongly about the approaching Christmas, all long for a

`rousing' dinner, but I fear will be disappointed, for everything is scarce around this place ...

I had hoped myself, to have a `big dinner,' and `Egg Nog,' but know very well it will be

impossible to get at.10

Despite this situation civilians in the area determined to provide the army with a special

holiday meal. Planned originally for Christmas the immensity of the undertaking prompted

the change to a New Year's dinner held on Sunday, 2 January 1865. Rumors abounded, one

Confederate telling his mother, "I here we is goin to have a big New Years dinner. They are

thousands of chickens and turkeys in Richmond for us." Newspaper accounts encouraged

these stories. The Richmond Examiner predicted "the biggest barbecue ever gotten up on

this continent," and told of "rounds of beef, saddles of mutton, venisons, whole shoats,

hams, sausage of country make, rich with sage and redolent with pepper; turkies, geese,

ducks, [and] chickens." A Georgia surgeon noted on January 1st, "Like Xmas the day with

me is dull - no change in our diet which is the principal enjoyment of a `reb'..." The

promised dinner didn't brighten his holiday. Though a few units received small portions of

the promised bounty, most were sorely disappointed, some being given bread only. Typical

was the soldier whose portion "consisted of 3 or 4 bites of bread and 3 bites of meat ... it was

quite a snack for a feast." The share of 1,500 men of the First Corps Artillery consisted of

"182 lbs of meat - a little bread & four or five bushels of turnips & potatoes." Disgusted at

the shortfall some units "gave their Bread to the Orphans" or the poor.11

At the century’s end the Spanish-American War was short-lived, but holiday celebrations

were held during the post-conflict occupation of Cuba, again with mixed results. Corporal

George J. Beard, 8th

Illinois Infantry (an African-American regiment), U.S. Volunteers, sent

this description of a Thanksgiving dinner for their officers to the Illinois Record in

November 1898,

Although in Cuba, several of the members of the 8th. Ill. Regt., who have organized

themselves into a Christian band, known as the Christian Endeavor, gave a very nice dinner

Thanksgiving Day to their Col. and staff.

Promptly at 1:30 the Christian [Endeavor] tent was crowded with guests from Col. John

R. Marshall down to the private soldier. The long table was beautifully decorated with wild

flowers, gathered in the mountains, and all the good things to eat that could be obtained in

the Santiago markets. Mr. William Farmer acted as the head waiter and performed his duties

as well as the full-dressed head waiter in the States. After all the guests had been assigned

their places at the table, and the invocation given by our Chaplain, Rev. Davis, the guests

were seated and began to devour the following good things to eat:

Menu

Pickles Tomatoes, Rice

Roast Ribs of Beef Lettuce

With Brown Potatoes Boiled Ham

Fried Chicken Sugar Corn

Mashed Potatoes Peaches

Baked Beans – Boston Style

Assorted Cake

Claret Lemonade Coffee

Cigars

The dinner was served without a pan being on the table, as the committee had secured

dishes, and that is something that a soldier in Cuba, except the officers, never sees. 12

In January the following year a “Committee of Vigilance” from the 8th Illinois voiced

several complaints about their regimental officers including allegations of fraud (perhaps

with some hyperbole regarding cash expended) concerning extra foodstuff promised for the

holidays:

… we poor devils longed for and looked forward to the coming of the special visitor and

courier sent to provide Xmas and Thanksgiving turkeys for us.

He had done his duty with integrity and he too has been victimized and made a “Jug

Head” of by those who sent him. He brought over [only] enough canned peaches to give

each company sixteen cans and enough Bents soda crackers to allow two-thirds of a box for

each company for Xmas dinner.

A question of information to the public: - Does sixteen cans of peaches constitute a full

box of peaches and will sixteen cans feed 103 men for one meal in a peach pie or cobbler [?]

… 13

There followed a discourse on the amount of money allotted for the holiday food and the

disparity with what was actually received. The outcome of the affair is not known, but the

enlisted men likely did not come out on top.

“Thanksgiving cheer distributed for men in service. New York City turned host to the boys

in service today and cared for every man in uniform,” Underwood and Underwood, circa

1918. http://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/page/18/

The quality of holiday meals in the First World War was just as uneven. Private June

Smith wrote from France on 26 November 1918, "Just finished dinner and it sure was a

Thanksgiving for us compared to what we have been having. We had steaks, mashed

potatoes, gravy, corn and tomatoes coffee and French bread." Of the December celebration

he noted only that "We had a very nice dinner ... it was good compared to what we have

been use to."14

A member of the 130th Field Artillery Regiment wrote of Christmas 1918,

the men ... rolled out of their comfortless cots at the first note of reveille ... In buildings half

wrecked by shell fire, in barns that had withstood the ravages of the centuries ... Articles

about turkey and all the trimmin's were utterly without foundation that day, as the men lined

up with their mess-kits and received their rations, which was all the slum-mixers could sling

together under existing circumstances. ["Slum-mixers" were cooks, a reference to the oft-

made beef stew they served up called slumgullion.]15

Thomas Crossman, a private in the 26th Division, wrote of a particularly impressive

Yuletide meal at LaVilleneuve, France.

The menu doesn’t do justice to the feed so I will enlarge on it and to do that I must begin

with Christmas eve. For weeks we had scouted around until we found the right place for the

function. It was'nt a cafe, nor a restaurant nor a hotel. It was about five kilometers from

Montigny in a little village of peasants, but a real home with a wonderful fire place, and

where candles are the means of light and a couple of old folks that cordiality [sic] ... beams

out on there old, wrinkled faces ... We arranged for the feed with them - But to make a

Christmas dinner for nine soldiers, all damn good fellers - we needed more than food - so we

scouted the country for the liquid refreshment. In this we were extremely luck[y] ... Twenty-

four bottles of beer and it was some beer - it was great - - - four bottles of wine of Burgundy.

This wine stayed in a keg for six years and then was bottled, god only knows how long ago -

oh boy, oh boy - I can't describe.

Ten bottles of champagne 'moet chandon’. It is enough to say that its the best champagne

in a country where good drinks is the religion. Then one quart of eau de view. This is

concentrated electricity in liquid form disguised in the harmless appearance of clear spring

water. Goes down like a grape juice and has a kick like an Army Mule. We got all this for

250 francs, approximately $50. ... We lugged this stuff four kilometers thru a driving rain

storm on Xmas Eve.

Now about the dinner which began at seven in the evening. The soup - I'd like to talk

forever on that soup - made of beef marrow and what a flavor.

Peas (Petit Pois). I don't know how frenchmen fix peas but zowie! I never tasted any

better. They tasted as if they put old cheese in them with a tint of Garlic.

Cream Carrots. All that was necessary to eat those was to surround a couple of slices with

the sauce and lay them on the tongue, close the eyes and let them melt.

By the way they thought necessary here, to give some beef fixed in junks but so tender

that all that was needed was to touch them with a fork and it would fall apart.

Then came the potatoes, mashed with cream and the roast goose. This goose ... was

stuffed with chestnuts. When it came on the table it looked like a painting, and how it was

good cooked! Then came cold roast pork and salad these I think were the two masterpieces

of the dinner way beyond description. There was however some thing better than anything

else and how you would enjoy it - old cheese, home made and it was the best I ever tasted.

Then we had a fine cake, Plum pies, American cigars & cigarettes.

The wonderful french `booze' was in complete harmony with the rest of the meal. Not too

much, not too little just right. We smoked, sang, drank until about 3 o'clock the next

morning and started back to Montigny. A little snow had fallen and the air was clear, we

sang our way home, contented, happy, satisfied that no one in the whole A.E.F. had a better

christmas than did we.

On the morning of Christmas we stood in line for a couple of hours to be reviewed by

President Wilson. They say he was in town but he didn’t come down our way.16

Here is Crossman's Christmas menu: December 25, 1918

CHRISTMAS DINNER

OF THE

OBSERVATION GROUP

YANKEE DIVISION

1918

MENU

Bouillon de Beouf en Tasse

Petit Pois Carotten a la Creme

Pommes de Terre en Puree

Cochon

Oie Rotie a la Marrons

Salada

Tarte a la Confiture Pruneau

Cafe Champagne

NoisettesRaisin du Sec

BonBons

Cigares Cigarettes

FETE A NOEL 17

Soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division eating a Christmas dinner in Italy, 1943.

Basting a turkey in the field on Thanksgiving, Europe, 1944.

http://ddaymemorial.blogspot.com/2014/11/thanksgiving-in-1940s.html

Marine Corps private Eugene Sledge described two particularly meaningful celebrations

in the Pacific during World War II.

As Christmas [1944] approached, rumor had it we were going to have a feast of real turkey.

There were several days out of the year when the Marine Corps tried to give us good chow:

10 November (the Marine Corps' birthday), Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. The

rest of the time in the Pacific war, chow was canned or dehydrated. Refrigeration facilities

for large quantities of food were not available, at least not to a unit as mobile and as lacking

in all luxuries as a combat division in the Fleet Marine Force. But the scuttlebutt was that

there were frozen turkeys for us in the big refrigerators on Banika.

The rumor proved true. Following Christmas Eve church services, and the singing of carols,

"we had our roast turkey, and it was excellent." 18

Sledge noted that the

New Year's celebration was even more memorable for me. On New Year's Eve after chow, I

heard some ... commotion over at the battalion messhall. The cooks had just about finished

squaring away the galley for the night when a sentry shouted, 'Corporal of the guard, fire at

post number three!'

I saw cooks and messmen in the messhall ... all rush outside to a fire burning in a grove of

trees near the galley ... By the light of the flames I could see men running around the galley

yelling, and I could hear the mess sergeant cursing and yelling orders. I also saw two figures

slide through the shadows toward our company street, but paid them little heed. In a few

minutes the fire was put out, just a can of gasoline some distance from the messhall that had

somehow caught fire ..." A short time later a "friend of mine appeared at my tent and said in

a low voice, 'Hey, you guys, Howard says come on down to his tent; plenty of turkey for

everybody!'

We followed him on the double. As I entered the tent, there sat Howard Nease on his cot,

a flambeau flickering beside him, and a towel on his lap under a huge, plump roast turkey.

'Happy New Year, you guys,' Howard said with his characteristically broad grin.

We filed past him as he deftly sliced off huge slabs of turkey with his razor-sharp kabar

[combat knife], and placed them into our opened hands. Others came in, and we broke out

our two cans of warm beer that each had been issued. Someone produced a can of jungle

juice that had been 'working.' A guitar, a fiddle, and a mandolin struck up the 'Spanish

Fandango' as Howard sliced turkey until the carcass was cleaned. ... We the survivors of that

recent bloodbath on Peleliu, forgot our troubles ... Enjoying the comradeship forged by

combat, we had the finest New Year's Eve party I've ever attended. ... When Howard was

killed by a Japanese machine gun in the early days of the Okinawa battle (his third

campaign), every man who knew him was deeply saddened. By his example, he taught me

more than anyone else the value of cheerfulness in the face of adversity.19

“PFC John A. Arnett (Fayetteville, NC) (Left) first man of Co “E”, 5th RCT, 24th U.S.

Infantry Division, to get in the chow line for his Thanksgiving Day dinner, gets a turkey leg

from 1st Cook, CPL Fred Burks (Chicago, Ill) (Right). Chow line was set up back side of

hill, approximately 200 yards from the MLR, Korea,” November 22, 1951, photograph by

Pvt. Donald Webster.

Finally, William Ehrhart, a Marine serving in Vietnam, recalled Christmas 1967.

You could hardly tell it was Christmas time except that we were issued a few cans of warm

soda and beer, and everybody got an unusually large number of Care packages from friends

and relatives back home, consequently suffering for days from the massive dose of alien

substances like rum-balls, butter cream candy and fudge.20

To cap things off "We dumped a good half-ton of chocolate chip cookies into the lake ..."

The aversion to this last treat was due to the large numbers sent over from stateside.

Evidently they were considered to be what all red-blooded American boys desired in the

way of food. Ehrhart writes, "And so, the chocolate chip cookies came to Vietnam. At first,

it was just small parcels of them with little cards inside that read: `We love you, fellas. Keep

up the good work, and come home safely and soon ...' But then the parcels got bigger and

bigger." According to Ehrhart they soon attained legendary status, and as fast as the men

tried to get rid of them "the YWCA Girls Glee Club Booster Mothers sent us more." Even

soldiers can have too much of a good thing.21

An enlisted man of the 1st Military Police Company, 1st Infantry Division. Joseph Bilby

notes, “One of my soldiers enjoys his Thanksgiving dinner [canned C-rations] in Vietnam

on the road to Cu Chi in 1966.” Courtesy of Joseph Bilby.

More Holiday Meal Photographs

“American soldier eating Thanksgiving dinner out of a mess kit in Italy in 1944.”

“ItalyTechnical Sergeant Fifth Grade William Fleming eats a Thanksgiving turkey leg in Italy

on 17 November 1944.”

“Sgt. Frank Shiborski eats a Thanksgiving turkey leg in Italy on 22 November 1944.”

“US troops eating Christmas dinner on a haystack, Italy 25 December 1943.”

Endnotes

1. George Weedon, Valley Forge Orderly Book of General George Weedon of the

Continental Army under Command of Genl. George Washington, in the Campaign of

1777-8 (New York, N.Y., 1971), 144. Joseph Plumb Martin, Private Yankee Doodle: A

Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier

(New York, N.Y., 1962), 100. Jonathan Todd, letters 1777-78, 7th Connecticut Regt.

(born 17 May 1756, died 10 February 1819), Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty -

Land - Warrant Application Files, National Archives Microfilm Publication M804, reel

2395.) Hugh F. Rankin, ed., "Albigence Waldo's Diary," Narratives of the American

Revolution (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1976), 184.

2. Joseph Lee Boyle, "From Saratoga to Valley Forge: The Diary of Lt. Samuel Armstrong,"

The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, CXXI, 3 (July 1997), 259-260.

3. Rankin, "Albigence Waldo's Diary," Rankin, Narratives of the American Revolution, 197.

Martin, Private Yankee Doodle, 149.

4. David Herbert Donald, ed., Gone for a Soldier: The Civil War Memoirs of Private Alfred

Bellard (Little, Brown and Co., Boston, Toronto, London, 1975), 36-37.

5. Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue (Austin and London: University of

Texas Press, 1979), 43.

6. Ibid., 176-178. Nat Brandt, Mr. Tubbs' Civil War (Syracuse Univ. Press, Syracuse, N.Y.,

1996), 107-108.

7. William B. Styple, ed., Writing and Fighting the Civil War: Soldier Correspondence to

the New York Sunday Mercury (Kearny, N.J.: Belle Grove Publishing Co., 2000), 230.

8. Ibid., 309.

9. W. Springer Menge and J. August Shimrak, eds., The Civil War Notebook of Daniel

Chisholm: A Chronicle of Daily Life in the Union Army, 1864-1865 (New York: Orion

Books,1989), 56-57.

10. J. Tracy Power, Lee's Miserables" Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the

Wilderness to Appomattox (Univ. of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1998),

229.

11. Ibid., 229-232.

12. William B. Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from

Negro Soldiers, 1898-1902 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987), 209-210.

13. Ibid., 214.

14. June B. Smith to his mother, 26 November and 26 December 1918, David Hinkley,

"Kansas Vs. the Kaiser - Private June B. Smith's Eyewitness to the First World War,"

unpublished MSS.

15. Sam Jarrell, "Christmas in Sommedieu," W.P. MacLean, My Story of the 130th Field

Artillery (Topeka, Ks., N.D.), 131. Henry Berry, Make the Kaiser Dance (Garden City,

N.Y., 1978), 283 (slumgullion).

16. Thomas J. Crossman, G2 - Headquarters troop, 26th Infantry Division, to "Sam," 26

December 1918. Courtesy of Lawrence E. Babits.

17. Ibid.

18. Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (New York and Oxford,

1981), 167-168.

19. Ibid.

20. W.D. Ehrhart, Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine's Memoir (New York: Kensington

Publishing Corp., 1985), 117-118, 324.

21. Ibid.