We herein propose a collection of some images tied to memories about food in the trenches, published within the soldiers' diaries, confessions, letters. It is important to take into consideration the censorship regime in force during the war: soldiers were subject to the mail's control and, therefore, it was not possible for them to share the real situation at the front along with their families. Memories written afterwards are more reliable: from them emerges a disapproval to the food quality, rather than to the food quantity.
Accordingly with what Captain Leo Pollini writes in his memories Le veglie del Carso: 'Alcohol revives and warms me up; takes the sense of humid and cold out of my body. Then the mess comes: my illusions make me dream of a chicken wing, a slice of panettone, some cakes, a glass of wine. They give me half loaf of bread cut into two pieces and filled with a cold and stringy cutlet. At first, I feel disappointed, but then I smile and voraciously bite that meal, made pleasant by hunger. If evil were all like this!
Many soldiers complain more for thirst than for hunger. Pollini furthermore writes: 'there is a pain within all this joy; we have not drunk for two days. Thirst, no agony for wounds, no distress for pain, no anguish of woe can match its torment. (…) Hunger is nothing in comparison.' Captain Romolo Conti also writes: 'We eat but canned meat, water is dirty and scarce.'
Giacomo Morpurgo, a very young soldier, is instead enthusiastic while writing to his mother: 'As for meals, we eat plenty of good food: and that's what we need, because such cool and healthy air devilishly whets our appetites. They also supply wine, and five daily cigarettes each, in the morning they give us coffee, or, at least, a liquid that, up here, can be considered as coffee, and it tastes as such. However, hardships so far do not appear to me to be either so serious or so intolerable.' He will die a few months later, on October 6th, 1916.