On the Use of Camouflage Pastry

It was the subtle use of camouflage pastry on their battlefield steak and Kidney pies which allowed the King’s Own Queens regiment to get within 50 yards of the German trenches during one of the decisive battles of WWI.

Up until then, with their camouflaged sauerkraut, the German forces had an inherent battlefield advantage over the allied troops, especially over the French army battlefield baguette, which had a tendency to leave a trail of crumbs that any German spotter plane could follow, enabling it to discover precisely where the French troops were massing for a pre-battle dejeuner. Often too, the number of corks left behind, as well as the piles of empty wine bottles, were very useful clues to any German spies operating behind the French lines, eager to learn more vital tactical details of the French battlefield menus.

As the First World War progressed, the British army became very cunning in their use of cardboard breakfasts and inflatable sausages which they used to fool the enemy as to the true intentions of the Allies. Once, a regiment managed to fool the Germans into calling off an attack by pretending to order several hundred bottles of brown sauce in time for a pre-offensive breakfast, knowing that the Germans would intercept the signal. The Germans knew that brown sauce was a vital component of the British infantry bacon sandwich and therefore calculated they were facing far more enemy troops than they actually were.

Originally, the invention of the tank was seen as a way of quickly getting hot food to the front-line troops. Initially envisaged as a mobile snack van, armoured against enemy fire (and also against a possible explosion of the famously volatile British battlefield gravy), the tank was intended to bring hot food right up to the front line while under fire.

However, because of the limited visibility, and the heavy steam build-up inside the tank as they prepared some fresh custard for the troops, the tanks missed their stopping places on the British trenches and went on to overrun the German positions with the British troops running behind them with their dishes, all eager for some fresh custard on their battlefield apple crumble.

Obviously, for the final push which won WWI, the British battle-ready Cornish Pasties were essential. Unfortunately, the Germans had – at that point in the war – perfected the anti-pasty sniper, capable of blowing the crust off a hot pasty from the relative safety of the German trenches and thus totally demoralising the British troops as they were about to ‘go over the top’ with the pasty. Therefore the British high command eventually realised that some sort of camouflage pastry would be essential. However, for the subterfuge to work, the precise placement of the pasty was all-important when matters of camouflage and deception were involved, so that the camouflage pastry of the pasty blended into its surroundings.

Fortunately, however, the British front-line chefs had run short of flour and other ingredients necessary for making the pastry for the pasties and had resorted to using mud which, luckily, made the Cornish pasties blend in perfectly with their surroundings as the trenches at that time consisted of various defensive arrangements of mud.

Thus were the British able to camouflage their frontline battlefield pasties ready for the final push, after the German army’s severe sausage shortage led to the failure of the Ludendorff Offensive to achieve any of its strategic goals, so then when faced with the overwhelming Allied advantage in battle-ready Cornish pasties the Germans had no choice but to surrender, thus bringing about the end of the First World War.