Poems about the Army Apprentices School, Harrogate
(Attributed to Terry Corbett, intake 54B, with some subsequent editing)

Food (Rations and Portions)

Line up in the breakfast queue, your pint mug in your hand,
Shuffle to the tea urn, on the hotplate rail it stands,
Someone tips it forward to drain out all the lot,
Mug under tap, he tries to balance the urn against his pot.

The liquid in the urn swirls round, the tea comes gushing out,
Control is lost, the urn falls down amidst a frantic shout.
The breakfast brew spills on the floor, steam rises like a fog,
Scalding tea, from boot to knee, has drenched the ‘Orderly Dog’.

Cornflakes thick as wooden shavings, milk well watered down,
Served by surly greasy cooks who never cease to frown.
Everything, like meat, is rationed, four ounces to a man,
A sausage black and shrivelled up, or a wedge of greasy spam,

In a long flat so-called ‘dixie’ eggs float in a sea of lard,
Twelve yolks across, two dozen down, small and pale and hard.
The cook has sliced the eggs in squares, East – West, North to South,
One slides down well but leaves a coat of lard inside your mouth.

Limp bacon rasher, scrambled egg so wet and pale and runny
Is poured upon your blackened toast, means colic of the tummy,
The milk’s so thin it seems to you the cow was grazed at sea,
The cook who serves the porridge asks, “One lump, two or three?”

Finish off with bread and butter, jam or marmalade,
One day the slice of bread so thick a boot sole could have made,
The next day when you get your bread, the slice is far too thin,
It only has one side to it, no thicker than your skin.

Everything was fried in lard, half raw or cooked for hours,
Spuds with eyes and bullet peas, gravy like April showers,
Slabs of yellow Yorkshire pudding floating in the gravy,
Looking just like rafts at sea rejected by the Navy.

Sunday roast, a slice of meat was slid across your plate,
Colour grey, just fat with gristle, a reject out of date.
Cabbage full of protein (snails) and cauliflower stalks,
Sloppy sprouts, roast spuds that pop with lard when pricked with forks.

Friday’s lunch is fish and chips, you’re hungry so must eat,
Peas tumble down upon your plate like drums that beat ‘retreat’.
The batter’s thick and hard as rock, a sardine lurks within,
With chips like nails, your stomach quails, the grub is really grim.

On Monday, all leftovers are mixed into a hash
With onions, pepper and cooked in squares, they call it ‘Baked goulash’.
It’s dark and brown and savoury, a cook’s real mystery mix,
You carve it up and force it down, your molars work like picks.

There never was enough to eat, and what there was, was manky
But cookhouse raids for extra food were classed as hanky-panky,
All the food was rationed out, with so much for each man,
If some went missing, we all suffered, no meat for us, just spam.

Bribe the cookhouse guard with fags to look the other way,
Bread and jam, baked beans and spam went swiftly on their way,
We’re in and out like locusts, then to the ‘spider’ bound
To flog off piles of sandwiches at sixpence for a round.

A decent meal at Christmas, before we went on leave,
Just three times in three long years our stomachs didn’t heave.
“Now eat up, lads, it’s Christmastime, and do you want some more?”
An A/T shouts, “Hey, did you raid the Red Cross parcel store?”

With thanks to  Trevor "Bill" Powell for this contribution.