We found out what the dixie carrier was for! New Facebook Post
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
https://www.facebook.com/OperationWarDiary/posts/640858495997746:0
Further to Monday's blog, several Citizen Historians helped solve the mystery of the dixie carrier, invented by Private T.E. Duffus of the London Scottish.
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I read a book about the Somme and it showed a notice saying "Notice - Dixies and tins to be filled at this tank".
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
Great! It's fantastic when we can all pool our knowledge like this and come up with an answer.
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by
HeatherC
moderator
The page that inspired this in the first place continues to be commented on:
http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD0000zz3
A dixie as I remember it from the British Army of the 90s was a large metal container with a handle a bit like a bucket, used for cooking - usually boiling water or cooking soup.
I have found a couple of black and white photos related to this in Richard Holmes excellent book "Tommy". The first shows men of the Queens carrying "hay boxes" in a stretcher-like arrangement very similar to the one in our diary picture. The hay boxes are rectangular, insulated containers with lids used for keeping food hot while it was carried up. The second picture shows food being cooked in an oval-shaped metal container actually in the trenches. Holmes describes this as a "Dixie". This is in the section of pictures following page 254 for anyone else who has the book!
The photos both seem to be from the IWM collection - the first has reference Q4839 and the second Q4843 (not sure if that is enough to find them?)
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
It is indeed! Here they are:
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205237058
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205216086
Fascinating stuff!
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