Daily Times

Like so many unlikely phrases, one finds industrial terms like drop forged and bake painted quite intriguing because they tend to denote wider notions and not merely processes in manufacturing. When a metal wrench is claimed to have been drop forged, it tells you about its great strength and reliability. Similarly, bake painting is considered to be a process under which an object is likely to keep its sheen and colour intact for a long time. In our kitchen, one could still spot a pan or two, which even though partly dented, are still preferred over the more fancy ones because of its reliable bake painted surface. These pans were of the same genre that the soldier’s pale field metal mug had been. These mugs had seen the glorious Battle of El Alamin in North Africa and the infamous fall of Stalingrad during World War II with the same dignified composure.

I would not be surprised if General Meinstein might have sipped his satisfying cup of coffee during his great armour blitz through the vast Soviet plains in the same humble mug. For a fact, the great World War II armour commander was quite unpretentious. However, one can claim with a little more degree of certainty that Churchill during his tour of military duty in Malakand must have gulped his thick black coffee in just such a mug, peering down the hill slopes from his picket where Utmankhel tribesmen might have hidden for a sudden rush. General Eisenhower would surely have benefitted from the services of this simple little container in the vineyards of Caen, reviewing the Allied bridgehead when the tide had turned in France in 1944.

I remember to have seen in the National War Museum in Kiev, Ukraine, a soldier’s metal mug with a neat bullet hole in its bottom. If you are thinking what I did then, it would not be difficult to figure out what must have happened to the poor owner. One cannot but admire the sniper’ s perfect shot and pity the one on the receiving end. According to Ukrainian folklore, soldiers killed in battle turn into cranes and forever keep a vigil over their country from the high heavens. A very patriotic notion it is but should the soldier behind the mug with a hole happen to be around, he would perhaps not like such an inglorious dispatch to military eternity.

In every military camp right from Rwanda to Normandy, Pearl Harbour to Peshawar, Kabul to Fort Ord and Cawnpore to Calcutta, one comes across the benign presence of this multipurpose, humble but noble little container. If not in the barrack itself then in a remote recess in the quartermaster’s dark store or under the table in the house of the unit’s cook, this time to stand in for the cook’s serving spoon. However, one cannot miss noticing its modest, chipped presence in the not so glamorous military junk shops in the ever-present soldier bazaar in every cantonment.

It has the amazing capacity to stand in for anything military except the commander, who as a rule is a shade better than a mug in many cases. Besides its primary duty to serve as an unbreakable teacup, it is also pressed in service as a shower aide, temporary food container, wholesale barrack whitewash splasher, manual lift for unwelcome rainwater, and when necessary, a shaving mug. It is generally uncomplaining, just like the soldier into whose haversack it fits in perfectly but does not much like the company of the intrusive field pickaxe. A pickaxe is an essential tool of war making but creates disturbing clatter on the march when hung over the infantry soldier’s back next to the mug.

It so happens that a military’s logistics genius has so far failed to resolve this territorial issue between the two since perhaps World War 1, or maybe even earlier. Other than the thud of oversized shoes of the soldier on the march, this clatter is a major source of giving away surprise and may have contributed to the German defeat in North Africa. One is fairly sure the Normandy beaches could have been overrun much earlier and with much less casualties if the Allied forces were not carrying so many enamelled mugs on their backs and cumbersome water bottles tucked into their sides. The US soldier’s addiction to coffee and its mug, for that matter, may have depleted many victories. Much of it could be attributed to the less than graceful treatment meted out to this reliable companion of war and peace by the opposing armies.

In the course of our military research regarding the role and status of the gentle enamelled mug, we have been able to identify two other objects of a soldier’s battle gear that greatly retard his ability to fight well through irritation and their poor team spirit. We have yet not talked of the free-floating steel helmet and socks with holes. We could discuss these battle impediments some other time as right now our attention is fixed on the perpetually maladjusted troika of enamelled mug, pickaxe and water bottle. The aim is not to say what causes defeats to modern armies but how a soldier fights despite being so unhelpfully loaded by his commanders.

Incidentally, the military water bottle was specifically designed to not only contain water for the soldier’s parched throat but also to prevent him from dozing off whenever there was a break in the march for battle. That is by a devious placement of this awkwardly dangling wet mass over the hip area just where the soldier might place his body weight while lying down for a brief rest. That must be why it has been an offence on the line of march to consume water from the bottle without permission. This deliberate discomfort is part of the unwritten doctrine of military necessity, since the aim is to defeat the enemy and not sleep en route. Starching the uniform like cardboard and tight belts were two of the other important norms of the same doctrine with a view to keep the soldier on his toes.

Back to the decent mug. Despite its overwhelming utility value, this ingenious piece of military metal work has neither been given its due place in the gallery like China’s classy blue pottery, Josia Wedgewood’s intricately designed dinner sets or the Indus Valley Civilisation’s baked clay pots, whereas, to be honest, they are no match in economy, durability and versatility to the mug. However there has been, perhaps, just one disadvantage, which has been that the enamelled mug tends to singe your lips if the brew is too hot, but that has more to do with the time at the user’s disposal than any fault of the mug itself. Otherwise, it is inexpensive, humble, hardy, long lasting, versatile and a bit noisy. It has hardly any pretensions and in spite of being a bit dented, occasionally discarded, and sometimes kicked about, is always ready to help. I hope you are not thinking of what I have begun to suspect you were. I am not talking about our countrymen; it is about the noble enamelled metal mug.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com