page 143

The Jolly Bakers

Yellow and dim the Camp street lamps showed through the rain. The arc lamp at the gates made the falling rain appear as shimmering silver strands. The "First Post" sounded and a few huts suddenly slipped into shadow, with the switching-off of their lamps. The "Last Post" sent more shadows over the Camp, and "Lights Out" completed the change. Only the street lamps, fed from the humming dynamo in the power-house, made the darkness visible.

But there was one building in the Camp in which the metamorphosis was reversed—from darkness it took form, in lighted windows, promptly at ten o'clock, and the busy bakers began their nightly task—for the building was the Camp bakehouse.

All the bakers did not work through the night—only two doughmakers turned night into day after the fashion of bakers. From sacks they measured the flour into long, deep troughs. What would, on the morrow, yield loaves of bread for the soldiers was mixed therein; and as the night wore on and the dough "worked" and rose, huge masses of it were heaped upon the clean tables, while the mixers filled the troughs again and went on mixing. The day peeped over the hills, to set the bugles blowing reveille. Then the night workers paused and prepared to depart, while the day shift of bakers came on duty and the fire-lighter made haste to fill his ovens with page 144split wood and inflammable material to start his fires in the twelve field ovens that are set in rows and are like the curves of an interminable "m." They are steel half-cylinders set in earth that forms a long mound, with the oven mouths facing the bakehouse. As the fires burned and crackled, the heat radiated out of the ovens and was retarded in its upward flight by the iron roof that covers the mound. To walk along between the ovens and the bakehouse was hotter than the stokehold of a steamer, and as the fires burned to embers—glowing embers—the heat made a shimmering in the air.

The jolly bakers who worked inside the bakehouse, cutting-out and shaping the loaves, were fast workers. They seized a piece of dough in each hand and rolled and made two loaves at once. Into flat trays these were laid. Presently the trays were filled. The fire-lighter, working in sympathetic unison, had raked out the embers from his ovens into the pit that runs along in front of them. Tray after tray was carried out and passed into the reeking ovens on a long wooden "peel"—the bakers laugh if you call it a spoon or spade. When 54 loaves were in each oven, the doors were put into place and 648 good loaves were left for 50 minutes to let the concentrated heat do its work. While they baked there was no idleness: the bakers made more dough and shaped more loaves, while the fire-lighter split wood into the size he fancied and cut old tickings into strips to make the starting blaze.

The staff sergeant-major in charge gave the signal to open the ovens. From each a puff of steam rose as the doors were opened. Then the crisp brown bread was taken out and carried to the bread store to be stacked in airy racks.

Just eighteen months ago the Trentham field bakery was started. Two field ovens were used, chiefly for the purpose of training bakers who were to leave with the Army Service Corps Reinforcements. So successful were these ovens that it was decided to put in more ovens and bake for the whole Camp. With a full Camp, the bakery to-day turns out 3200 loaves a day—the ovens are filled and emptied five times, and to do this means using daily nearly two tons of flour and large quantities of firewood. The staff consists of four n.c.o.'s and eleven men, and the hours worked average between eleven and twelve. Presently the field bakery will cease to be used for baking bread for the whole Camp. A permanent bakery is being built, and in future all bread will be baked there, while a few field ovens will be kept for use in training bakers who are bound for the Front.