“We’re all OK. Plenty of rations, water and rum.”

During heavy action during an operation in August 1917 against the ALOOF Trench in the Lens area of operations by the 18th Battalion C.E.F. the following communication was written and passed back by messenger to “Adjutant Radish” at Battalion Headquarters.

To Adjut. Radish [codename]

Casualties 2 killed
5 wounded

I have completed a relief of all men who were in the front line last night.

JM Fisher Lieut
O.C. D Coy

We are all OK. Plenty of rations, water and rum. [emphasis mine]

This is a prescient reference as I just finished reading Tim Cooks “More a Medicine than a Beverage”: “Demon Rum” and the Canadian Trench Soldier of the First World War.

If you are less inclined to read the complete paper the Legion web site has a web article by the same author titled “Rum in the Trenches”. It is shorter but gives a good precis of Cook’s thoughts.

The above article references a quote from a soldier of the 18th:

M.A. Searle of the 18th Cdn. Battalion was one of the infantrymen ordered to hold the dissolving ground at Passchendaele and he frankly recounted: “Most of us carried on…because of not limitless but more than ordinary issues of rum.”

It was interesting to note that during an important communication from one part of the action to the headquarters would assure them that they had plenty of rum. It obviously was an important part of the Canadian warrior culture at this time.