I know the US soldiers had vats of coffee available when possible. Did the British still make cups of tea with tea bags?
Not quite what you’re looking for but.
The “Vessel Boiling Electric” or “BV” was an innovation at the very end of World War II, when the Centurion tank was introduced with the device fitted inside the turret.[2][3] Previously, British tank crews had disembarked when they wanted to “brew-up” (make tea), using a petrol cooker improvised from empty fuel cans[4] called a “Benghazi burner”.[5] Use of the BV enabled the crew to stay safely inside the tank and reduced the time taken for breaks. From Wiki.
So the Brits did have petrol cookers.
Tea was undoubtedly part of the ration in World War II. To suggest anything else is all rather grotty, really.
In the book- “A Bridge Too Far” about Operation Market Garden, the Allies biggest loss in ww2, and totally Montgomery’s fault- there is a scene where the British tanks stop short of one of the towns that the Airborne had captured for a tea brew up, infuriating the US Paratroopers.
“…..This trend continued over the first half of the 21st century, with tea remaining the preferred drink throughout both World War One and World War Two. The popularity of coffee in the UK during World War Two was so low that the UK government opted against rationing coffee products”
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Teabags are a fairly recent innovation. Tea was normally made with loose tea. Tins of tea in the ration boxes was a composite, with powdered milk and sugar already in.
They do predate even WWI, much less WWII (silk tea bags were patented in 1903, first marketed in 1904, and paper tea bags patented in 1930), but I have no idea how commonly they were in distribution (and use) in England by the late '30s.
Everyone I knew still made tea in a pot through the 1960s, the tea in teabags became more common in the 1970s. It was perceived (often correctly) to be using inferior quality teas.
One of the Canadian war correspondents in his memoirs describes Churchill visiting the troops behind the lines during the fight for the Netherlands. His handlers were desperate to keep him sober, but his proclivities were well known. The Canadian officers offered him a cup of tea, and when he took a sip and realized it was whiskey, he drank it without saying anything to the people with him.
From a WWII-era guide for U.S. service members in England: “The British can’t make a good cup of coffee. You can’t make a good cup of tea. It’s a fair exchange.”
Was high-quality coffee generally available druing the war, and did it survive whatever they did to turn it into instant K-rations?
This article indicates that, at least for U.S. troops and defense workers, supplying coffee to them was a high priority for the U.S. military, and the troops were more likely to have access to regular coffee than those on the home front; due to shipping issues and general shortages, coffee was rationed to civilians, and alternatives (like Postum and chicory coffee) and fillers (barley, acorns, etc.) were often used.
This is a complaint I’ve seen from US troops in a number of accounts, and it’s based on a misunderstanding: British troops would never halt just to make tea – but if required to halt for any reason, they would make tea. In the same way that GIs, in a similar situation, would make coffee.