How did the Brits brew up in WW2?

http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol086db.html

I think this answers the question, specifically in this paragraph:

"Napoleon only had it partly right when he said that an army marches on its stomach; we in the Eighth Army in North Africa in the early days marched on tea. At every halt, however brief, however arduous the circumstances, out would come the cut-off petrol tins half-filled with sand, in would go the petrol, and in short order a thousand twinkling fires would signify that a brew was on the go."

Even more interesting was what Boks got up to in POW camps in Italy!



"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."

I've just read the book, and it describes the method in there. Basically, you mixed sand and petrol into a slurry in one tin and set it alight, then balanced the other tin on top, leaving air spaces below. If the fire started to die down, you gave the sand/petrol mix a stir to bring more petrol to the surface. Hope that helps.

Sugar would have been a highly priced commodity in the desert. My Grandad was in Africa during WWII and told all sorts of stories of dealing with the local Arabs and Bedouins etc. He said that they would trade eggs for sugar and that they would always get ripped off with a large % of rotten eggs so they would not fully fill the jerrycans with sugar but only put a top layer of sugar on can full of sand. When they checked it was sugar by pouring a handful it would pour and only when they got back to camp would they find out it was largely sand. They would test the eggs by picking some at random and cracking them on the bonnet of a jeep and they would cook due to the intense heat.

Anyway, they would be drinking compo tea, which has sugar already in it.