I Am, Of Course - Obviously! - Talking About Bread
Not the band, before you quizzically narrow your eyes in confusion, as Conrad is not known for a love of soft-rock bands, which in my mind veer dangerously close to pop.
ANYWAY as a picture of a loaf is a bit boring here's the album cover for their hot platter 'Manna', which is a terrible pun I can only approve of. Art!
I have somewhat perverted the original saying 'Bread is the staff of life', a proverb from the 17th century that takes it's cue from the Bible, such as the quotation in John 6:35 'And Jesus said unto them I am the bread of life'. Art!
A pub in Todmorden
More generally 'Stuff' because I hope to include more in this Intro than merely loaves. We'll see if I get around to that.
So, today's Intro is derived from a couple of paragraphs in Janet Macdonald's seminal 'Supplying The British Army On The Western Front'. Art!
I am looking at the chapter 'Food and Drink', wherein the sheer enormity of managing the logistics of catering to an army of 1.8 million men in France and Flanders is laid bare. There were three British army bakeries in France: at Calais, Le Havre and Boulogne. Art!
Dough being made at Calais
At Calais, a bakery staff of 1,000 worked in the four field corps bakeries, capable of turning out 900,000 pounds of loaves per day, which comes in at a shade over 400 tons of bread (!). The staff worked in three shifts around the clock, and since there were no machines to mix dough, it was all made by hand. With all that kneading they must have had biceps big as watermelons! Each shift turned out seven batches of bread per shift. Art!
Field bakery company
At Le Havre, the field bakery went through 1,000 sacks of flour daily, meaning 98,000 pounds, or 44 tons, requiring 54 tons of water to make dough. The greatest output of bread amounted to 150 tons in a single day. Art!
The field bakery at Boulogne was larger than that at Le Havre but smaller than Calais, being able to produce 530,000 pounds of bread, or 236 tons daily, needing 290 tons of water for the dough. Bread was not baked at night as a precaution against air raids, dough being produced instead. Also at Boulogne were large bread stores, fourteen of them, capable of accommodating 900,000 two-pound loaves - being an awesome total of 5,625 tons if they were ever filled to capacity. The problem with holding this many loaves is that many would go stale, mouldy or attacked by vermin before they could be issued, being far above what the army needed on a daily basis. Art!
This is actually a storehouse of South Canadian flour on it's way to provide relief for Belgian civilians, but it gives you an idea of how enormous the scale of supplying bread was. That first 'wall' of 80 sacks would come in at almost 8,000 pounds of flour. At Boulogne, there was a special flour hangar, where sacks of flour could be kept clean and dry, to the mass of over 4,500 tons.
Don't forget this is just supplying bread.
The we have the wily old General Long, who was the Director Of Supplies at the War Office - none of this namby-pamby PC nonsense about 'Defence'!- whom Ol' Jan does not glorify with a first name, nor whether he was a Major-General or Lieutenant-General or a Brigadier-General, so I have not been able to identify him properly. Art!
The War Office, looking all aggressive
You see, when war broke out, a lot of manufacturers looked to make a killing, if you'll pardon the expression. The price of sugar soared from 12 shillings and thruppence per hundredweight* to as much as 56 shillings, blatant profiteering. General Long called the principal sugar merchants into his offices, explained to them that he knew exactly how much sugar was in their warehouses, also that he had already placed guards upon them to stop anything leaving. Customs and Excise had agreed that nothing would leave these warehouses under bond until the army's needs were satisfied. Long offered them the opportunity to accept the price of 12s 3d or he would seize the sugar and pay for it at the end of the war.
They took the deal.
Gibber The Whut
There is a Nork on Twitter that I follow, and by default I have to mean the Norwegians, as the miserable serfs of Norkland way out east think a garden gate is frighteningly advanced technology. He's put up one of the most hideous AI generated images of the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut imaginable, which Conrad simply had to Bookmark and share. Art!
Predictably it got all the MAGA crown frothing with anger, hurling insults at 'Glenn Tunes' and Norway because their delicate fee-fees were hurt. Good!
As I Keep Explaining, We Are Living In The Future
A couple of months ago Your Humble Scribe witnessed a few on-line videos of Ukrainian Unmanned Ground Vehicles, which one wag described as 'lawnmowers with machine guns'. Art!
UGV TWW 12.7
Side orientation. Buff paint scheme for summer terrain. Art!
Here you see it up close with puny human for scale. Note that the machine gun here is the Browning 'Ma Deuce' .50 calibre i.e. half-an-inch, which is 12.7 in millimetres. This thing has a terrific punch and can kill orcs out in the open a mile away. It has cameras for remote viewing and night-vision.
One of these captured 3 orcs in the Zaporizhzhia oblast. One presumes it has a speaker and talks like a Dalek, for maximum terror. Although maximum terror if they were made autonomous. DO YOU WANT SKYNET? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!
Get Out Of Here With Your Clickbait!
Yes yes yes, I know EXACTLY how ironic that alarum is. Suck it up and sue me. Art!
Sounds scary, nicht wahr? Apart from one thing. Art!
Less the gutter press than the sewer press. They make Fox News look impartial and analytical. Get out of here!
There may be a risk of King Piggy trying to threaten Vietnam for not bowing down and worshiping his scrofulitic hide, but, and a but in neon letters ten feet tall, the last South Canadian involvement in Vietnam did not end well for South Canadian geo-political power.
On the other hand, Vietnam hasn't fought a was since 1979 and all the territorial and main-force units have absolutely no experience of combat.
On the other hand - only two mentioned so far - South Canada is currently embroiled in Venezuela and shortly to be embroiled in Iran. How much force-projection do they possess, and what would be the strategic aim of invading Vietnam? Art!
Sorry, this was supposed to be a picture and caption. Conrad bloviating again.
You What?
Apologies for using a second illo from my news feed, I couldn't let it lie. Art!
Erm - the railway in Great Britain - I have to call it that to offend 'Horseface' Lavrov - did not exist for another 200 years after 1621. The Stockton and Darlington Railway came into operation in 1825. You can see the discrepancy there. Do they mean that railways were established along roads that had been laid down from 1621 onwards, making them a permanent way? Keep away from me, clickbait.
Finally -
Going out with a Biercism again, thank you Ambrose Gwinnet.
"Club,n: An association of men for the purposes of drunkenness, gluttony, unholy hilarity, murder, sacrilege and the slandering of mothers, wives and sisters. For this information I am indebted to several estimable ladies, their husbands being members of several clubs."
* In PROUD IMPERIAL weights, 112 pounds.
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