The gingernut maker

The rations New Zealand soldiers had overseas left a lot to be desired.
Bully beef (fatty and oversalted) and ship’s biscuits which were hard as rock were staples.
In fact the food was so deficient in essential vitamins that it left them vulnerable to scurvy as well as illnesses like dysentery and typhoid.
So anything that arrived from home were more valuable than gold.
Families along with the Red Cross organised things like condensed milk, coffee and cocoa to be delivered to the fighting men.
And around the country families also sent personal care packages.
One was a gingernut biscuit. Not quite the ones that are our favourites today. But one from a recipe made by Taranaki woman, Helena Marion Barnard, who received the British Empire Medal for baking and sending a truly astonishing four and a half tonnes of biscuits.
Helena Marion Brown was born in Nelson on April 3, 1865 to Alfred Joseph Brown Rosenberg and Sarah Elizabeth Brown Rosenberg.
She married Henry James Barnard in 1884 and they went to live in California during a gold rush but ended up back in New Zealand and they went on to have a daughter and eight sons.
By the time World War 1 broke out they were living in Eltham. Six of the boys went out to serve in the war, three of them at Gallipoli. Two died there and the other four succumbed to illness, shell shock or serious wounds.
Helena said she first started making the biscuits for her sons to take tramping but during the war she began sending them overseas packed in tins.
The biscuits were considered tiny - only about the size of our $1 coin now, but that made them perfect to put a handful in a pocket.
She was prolific making them and also with knitting socks and balaclavas.
Not long after the end of the war she and Henry moved to Wellington but he died in 1922.
Marion bought a bell for her two boys that died at Gallipoli which is part of Wellington’s (currently silent) National War Memorial Carillon.
Then in 1939 when World War II started, she was 80 and she began all over again.
Food rationing made it harder but she managed to get a special permit for extra rations. She made nearly a million biscuits that were sent to troops.
Letters from all over the world came to her, simply labelled to Mrs Barnard, The Gingernut maker.
Marion lived to 100 - telling her story to Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision - before she died on August 16, 1965 and is buried in Bolton St Cemetery.
For those who want to know here is the recipe: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/.../mrs-barnards-gingernuts.../