Battle-Ready Marmalade

Now the No First Use Of Battle-Ready Marmalade Treaty has been signed by the world’s leading powers, the hope now is that it will see the end of those small battle-ready catering portions of marmalade that cased so much trouble and frustration during the now infamous battlefield breakfasts of both world wars.

The disasters of the battlefield breakfasts of the First World War now seem obvious in hindsight. It is said of that war that tactics had failed to keep up with technology. This was certainly true of battlefield catering, especially the essential front-line breakfasts. Both sides suffered massive losses of toast and butter, and the British suffered heavily from not being able to get a nice cup of tea to the front line in time. Hence, in the latter stages of the war, the invention of the tank, this was meant to be a massive self-propelled tea urn capable of crossing those muddy battle-scared shell-holed battlefields to get tea to the front line while it was still hot. Both sides had experimented with artillery delivered toast with mixed results, often with the toast ending up uneaten, muddy and soggy in the quagmires of the western front.

However, by the time of WWII, many of the technological and logistical problems of the trench-based battlefield had been solved, leading many military strategists feeling that war between any of the major powers would no longer be possible.

However, the change of tactics in the Second World War to concentrate on movement meant that the marmalade needed to be ready for immanent toast application within minutes of an offensive being launched.

However, once the British boffins developed the shrapnel-proof biscuit, it was more or less all over for the Axis forces, especially when the might of the American War machine began producing overwhelming quantities of toast.

Once WWII was over, the cold war began with the ever-present threat of mutually-Assured marmalading. However, such was the West's overwhelming superiority in breakfasting technology – leaving aside the woeful under-substantial Continental breakfast, of course, - that after only 30 years of attempting to match the West's increasingly sophisticated range of marmalades, the Soviet Union conceded defeat when NATO produced its first intercontinental Three-Fruit Marmalade, ready for deployment. Only a few days later the Berlin wall collapsed and some claimed history had come to an end.