10 Dec 1941, Sheridan's diary of the hostilities

Submitted by brian edgar on Sat, 10/13/2012 - 21:55

This is going to be one of our busiest days as we have to produce 12000lbs of bread. As daylight is not until 6.45a.m. this delays an early start as we are not allowed to light up our Field ovens until daylight., Hammond, Tuck,, Bonner and myself have to keep an eagle eye on every move the Chinese bakers make as they are still not familiar enough in the operation of Field baking. Leung Choy is a very harassed man as he has to interpret many of my orders to all the Bakers, but he is a loyal worker and gets the best of co-operation. We are drawing our last batch well after dark and produce the required figure of 12000 lbs. I am still working at 11p.m. preparing next days’ details and production figures. Mr Wood ((The Warrant officer Master Baker)) is attached to the Supply Depot, he comes round the Bakery often and is quite pleased with the set up. He also remarked on the excellent quality of the Bread. In fact it looks and tastes better than the bread turned out in the Queens Road bakery. Aldershot ovens using wood as fuel and with the oven sealed up during baking seem to give the bread a nutty flavour. We are now supplying the H.K.V.D.C. and other auxiliary forces as well as the Army, Navy and Air Force. It is estimated that within the next day or two bread production will reach at least about 14000 lbs daily. ((For comparison: the modern Lane, Crawford Bakery in Stubbs Rd. where all bread for civilians was produced until December 21 baked 16,000-22,000 lbs per day.))

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