"food rations for privates vs NCOs vs officers" Topic

Hello friends,

My question is this. Were the food rations the same in size and quality for privates, NCOs, and officers ?

For Russians ….

For NCO's and rankers – the same : they ate with their artel', a sort of communal small business that arranged food supplies delivery and cooking, gardens/fields in military settlements, sale of extra items (like a French cantinier) and managed private work done by the men (for extra pay) in their off-hours – typically an artel' had about a demi-platoon of men.

For officers and their servants – the officiers received a cash allowance to buy food, the amount scaled to rank (and so also to the number of servants).

As a pratical matter, especially on campaign, the company-grade officers mostly used their allowance to buy meals from an artel' of their own men, and hence mostly ate the same.

Genral and field-grade officers were supposed to have enough extra allowance (or personal wealth) to provide for formal "diners" for the junior officers under their command.