Manual of Military Training / Second, Revised Edition

by James A. Moss

If the stream be small, the water supply may be increased by building a dam.

Small springs may be dug out and each lined with a gabion, or a barrel or box with both ends removed, or with stones, the space between the lining and the earth being filled with puddled clay. A rim of clay should be built to keep out surface drainage. The same method may be used near swamps, streams, or lakes to increase or clarify the water supply.

Water that is not known to be pure should be boiled 20 minutes; it should then be cooled and aerated by being poured repeatedly from one clean container to another, or it may be purified by apparatus supplied for the purpose.

Arrangements should be made for men to draw water from the authorized receptacles by means of a spigot or other similar arrangement. The dipping of water from the receptacles, or the use of a common drinking cup, should be prohibited.

In the field it is sometimes necessary to sterilize or filter water. The easiest and surest way of sterilizing water is by boiling. Boiled water should be aerated by being poured from one receptacle to another or by being filtered through charcoal or clean gravel. Unless boiled water be thus aerated it is very unpalatable and it is with difficulty that troops can be made to drink it.

Filtration merely clarifies—it does not purify. The following are simple methods of filtration:

1. Dig a hole near the source of supply so that the water may percolate through the soil before being used.

2. Sink a barrel or box into the ground, the water entering therein through a wooden trough packed with clean sand, gravel or charcoal.

3. Place a box or barrel in another box or barrel of larger size, filling the space between with clean sand, gravel, moss or charcoal, and piercing holes near the bottom of the outer barrel and near the top of the inner. The filter thus constructed is partly submerged in the water to be filtered.

4. Bore a small hole in the bottom of a barrel or other suitable receptacle, which is partly filled with layers of sand, gravel, and, if available, charcoal and moss. The water is poured in at the top and is collected as it emerges from the aperture below.