Left - stereoview of French field kitchen, World War I
A Pot of Tea
The following Service Selection deals with Roberts love of tea. It was included in his "Ballads of a red Cross Man" book of verse. The following passage is from a book Service wrote in 1928, and serves as a good introduction to this Poem. Click Here To Go To Poem
Coffee Versus Tea
"Let us now come to two forms of liquid nourishment that will probably do you far more harm than beer or light wine-tea and coffee . . . ah Coffee! how can I chant your praise! Hot, rich, newly ground-most potent, most delicious, most fortifying of drinks! Friend in need, in moments of cold and weariness and discouragement what gratitude I owe your valiant brew! Yet if I drink a cup I will want a dozen, and then the blood will surge through me till my veins rear up and roar. In bygone days it took two black glasses to buck me up for a job of work, and as I tapped my Corona I would hear the tapping of my motor. But never again. Now I am content to inhale the fragrance of the roasting bean in the village grocery, and see ancient yokels with the hearts of hinds gulping it in great brown bowls. Let those who can drink all they can get. I only envy them.
And tea? We like to defend the things we like, so here goes . . . Tea abused is bad but used in moderation is-not so bad. It dilates the blood vessels, aids circulation and elimination. It stimulates the brain without marked reaction. I quenches thirst better than a cold drink and drives away fatigue by by sluicing the system and flushing the tissues. If taken in the afternoon tea helps to complete digestion of lunch. As a stimulant it is less potent than coffee, and can be less easily exonerated from bad after effects*
Stimulants are bad, but a stimulant may be good. I have always preferred eating to drinking, and so so still. Eating kills my capacity for work: drinking increases it. Tea has done even more than coffee to inspire me. I used to do all my work after midnight on cups of strong black tea. No matter how fagged I was they would make my pulses throb, my eyes gleam. I wrote a book on tea, toiling from one in the morning till five, and doing my day's work as usual. Indeed, almost all I have written has been done under its stimulation. I have praised it in prose and vaunted it in verse. It has meant a lot to me in my life and is still my besetting weakness. It will be the last of my vices to go- but it isn't a bad thing to have some vices one can jettison when the need comes.
* Good tea is easier to make than good coffee. One can drink more of it and therefore it flushes the system better. However, besides about 4% caffeine it contains about 24% tannin, and for this reason coffee can put it all over tea when it comes to a scrap in the health ring.
by Robert W Service
From " Ballads of A Red Cross Man" 1916
(Spelling is as written and reflects dialect)
You make it in your mess-tin by the braziers rosy gleam;
You watch it cloud, then settle amber clear;
You lift it with your baynit, and you sniff the fragrant steam;
The very breath of it is ripe with cheer.
You're awful cold and dirty and a-cursin' of your lot;
You scoff the blushin' 'alf of it, so rich and rippin' 'ot;
It bucks you up like anythink, just seems to touch the spot:
God bless the man that first discovered tea!
Since I came out to fight in France, which ain't the other day,
I think I've drunk enough to float a barge:
All kinds of fancy foreign dope, from caffy and doo lay,
To rum they serves you out before a charge.
In back rooms of estaminays I've gurgled pints of cham;
I've swilled down mugs of cider till I've felt a bloomin' dam;
But 'struth! they all ain't in it with the vintage of Assam:
God bless the man that first discovered tea!
I think them lazy lumps o' gods wot kips on asphodel
Swigs nectar that's a flavour of Oolong:
I only wish them sons o' guns a-grillin' down in 'ell
Could 'ave their daily ration of Suchong.
Hurrah! I'm off to battle, which is 'ell and 'eaven too;
And if I don't give some poor bloke a sexton's job to do,
Tonight, by Fritz's campfire, won't I 'ave a gorgeous brew
(For fightin' mustn't interfere with Tea).
To-night we'll all be tellin' of the Boches that we slew,
As we drink the giddy victory in Tea.
God bless the man that first discovered tea!
Click to Return to Back to Service Archives
