Even though I am well aware of the story of the ANZAC biscuit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_biscuit#Origins), I couldn’t help but entertain the thought of the ANZACs being the ones battling to make the biscuit right on the shores of Gallipoli…
Brave Australian and New Zealand troops avoiding certain death up the Turkish cliffs, carrying bulk quantity rolled oats, barrels of golden syrup, copious sticks of butter and bags upon bags of flour.
Through the mud and trenches trying to combine the ingredients to bake right there on the battlefield, under gun fire and mortar shells.
“Private! You get that batch to the front line oven! NOW!”
Artillery would be violently changing the face of ground, sending dirt and debris into the air as a young private would run through the biting bullets, dodging the bodies of his dead comrades, all the while trying to keep his batch of 8 uncooked biscuits across the undulating fields of barbed wire without upturning the tray, or losing an oven mit.
“WE NEED ANOTHER MIXING BOWL UP HERE!”
Another young corporal from the 1st AIF wipes the sweat from his brow with a dough covered hand:
“It’s no use. We’re cut off from the west… we can’t get any sugar out this far. These biscuits won’t be sweet enough to win this damn war”
Heroes like Weary Dunlop and his donkey would cross the bloodied land bringing glasses of milk to Australian troops to dunk. Parched soldiers becoming ill from eating often dry or undercooked biscuits.
“It is pure horror”, writes LCpl Samuel Jenkins to his future wife back in his home town to Bathurst, NSW, “Many times the ingredients aren’t mixed well. Many biscuits come out of the oven missing a vital element. Oats mostly. Sometimes coconut. It’s unbearable. I watched as the 11th Baking Regiment was shelled this morning, several ovens were completely destroyed. There was dough everywhere…”
A Turkish charge left several companies cut off from supply lines. Butter was becoming scarce and many feared the worst. Holding down the line, only several meters from the Turkish trenches, Sgt. William Ferguson was obliterated by an artillery shell, leaving nothing but his smoking stumps still in the Army Issue mixing crockery.
94 years after the futile battle that left thousands of ANZACs dead or wounded, the memory of those brave culinary soldiers lives on. And on April 25 on those shores, some say you can still smell the baking in the air. We will remember them.
