The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-12-24

took three of these emergency rations with him, intending to use one for each day.
 | He found, however, that one ration, or eight ounces of this concentrated food, was sufficient for the whole three days and he was not hungry at the close. l I am nibbling at one of these ra- tions as I write. It tastes just like chocolate, and l am told that it can be made by any chocolate factory We have such factories in nearly every large city, and General Sharpe tells me | that an order for them might be placed ] at any time in 90 or our chief cities, and that each factory would turn out | 15.000 to 10000 day. In this way we could have 500,000 such ratiops al- most upon call. These rations keep a long time. The one am nibbling at is three years old and not stale.
 Our Cooks in the Field I At the cooking and baking schools the students are taught how to do all sorts of work without any machinery to speak of. They are taught to make bake ovens. which consist of little more than hole in the ground or of trenches covered with clay. One of these rude makeshfts Is kind of barrel oven. A flour barrel or any other old round thing is half sunken in the earth and clay put over it in suclfa way that when the fire is started the barrel burns out and the clay is formed into an oven They also have semi-cylinders of iron which are used sometimes. This was the form of oven that was em- ployed largely during the Spanish American war. It is, as General Sharpe says, man killer, and is only put up in cases of emergency.
 The army cooks are taught to do their | all o1t food equipment is now such that our army will have the best of meals while on the march and in camp. These will | be prepared upon what are knowh as | iron field ranges. They are of different sizes. one of which is so small that it could easily be carried on the. back of u mule, and another, twice as big, which can be transported by wagon.
 As Big as a Hat Box
 The small range is sufficient to do all the cooking for a company of 55 men, and nevertheless 1t is not as big as a woman's hat box of the present time. | It is about 20 inches square and -16 inches high and at first sight it looks like little safe or money chest. Never | theless it contains all the pans, kettles and equipment to supply that many men. It includes stovepipe and a lantern and all of the kitchen utensils.
 How would any woman reader of this article like to have a stove the size of a steamer trunk. and put all her Kitchen tools in 1t and go on a trip to cook for 55 men. That is what the army cook does The range is set upon the ground usually over a trench or hole and fire built beneath it. It can be put up and taken down in five minutes. During my stay at the school the sergeant cook in charge took one out at the back and ses 1t up in front of the camera. The photo graph shows that the range only reaches my knee and nevertheless it will cook three meals day year in and year out, for 5 men.
 The other range, which Is intended for Ill men, is perhaps twice as big. It is made of sheet steel, but it is to be made in the future of a pure iron, which will not rust. I am told that the commissary department now has enough of these two kinds of ranges on hand to supply an army of 260,o00 men with food in the field, So that if an army of that size should De called into being we could supply them