3-Days of Marching Rations

[M. Demetrius]

I'd be wary of dried pork. As most already know, pork can carry some pretty serious parasites (like the trichina worm, e.g.) If not cooked to a high enough temp to kill these organisms, some of them can enter your body via your digestive system and cause a serious, if not terminal disease. That's why they smoke and salt cure hams, and other pork parts.

In some seasons, rabbit has the same sort of parasite problem. Months that have no R in their name in English (basically summer) are not good months for eating rabbit.

Dried beef and venison work just fine, and last a long time --years, even-- if kept dry. Just snip them into small chunks and put them in the stewpot/grain pulse, and they'll get softer by the time the grain is done. Water was not always such a big concern, as a proper camp would have a water source nearby.

Nobody can carry a sufficient water supply for several thousand men that has to be the only water for days on end. They found out how hard that got on the Parthian campaign (and drat those camels who carried those extra arrows, too!)