WW2-era army food

[Norm Cromie (RIP)]

Karman and Geoff;
Don’t want to spoil your evening meal but here is an army tale that I am afraid will never be reported in regimental archives.
The regiment was stationed in Little Hampton. Myself and 7 other guys were billeted in a little room with a small coal fireplace. We had a great old guy by the name of Duke Mc…….. He was a Scotchman from Nova Scotia. How the enlistment officer misread his age, because I swear he must have been in his sixties. Now we were all jammed in this room foot to foot and we had our kit bags with us, which wasn’t always the case. Well Duke was quite a drinker and each night he would come home pretty well smashed. As you know, lights out meant lights out and so all you would see was a glow from the soft coal still burning in the fireplace. Duke had this rather unsanitary habit of urinating in the fireplace when he came home, as it was a long walk outside the building to the latrine. So I can tell you urinating on a soft coal fire was something else. If you have ever smelled piss on burning soft coal it would put mustard gas to shame.
On one evening I heard Duke come in and there was always someone who could nudge him to the fireplace, because none of us wanted to be anointed with urine. Well! I waited patiently for the hissing sound that I knew would surely come but nothing happened, to my surprise. The next morning when one of my buddies who was rather a reserved and dainty person and always received a great number of food gifts from home. The next morning he opened up his kit bag and said oh my God, my cake is soggy I must have spilled something over the Christmas cake my Mother sent me. Anyway he wanted to know if anybody wanted a piece of cake. Well I can tell you my answer was negative, negative, negative.
I then went in to a laughing spell that I could not control, If only this chap and the rest of the guys realized what truly happened Duke would have had a patrol waiting to take him to the latrine each night he came in late plastered. .
My question is, if the food gift had of been vegemite, would it have been soggier?