FIGURE 16:
Simple gas mask with flutter valve or check valve. Ambulance dogs and horses in the gas zone were equipped as shown.
With regard to water, while the regular line officers must also keep an eye to its general purity, it is generally left to the care of the medical staff to test it from time to time to make certain of its fitness for human use. We experienced a good deal of trouble in making the men keep their wash lines clean and in making them refrain from throwing soapy, greasy water on the ground. It is the easiest method—for them—but the costliest in the long run, and they must be made to throw it into the proper drains.
Then, too, no camp will be complete without a thorough system of garbage disposal. The refuse should be collected into tins that can be closed to keep away the rats, etc., and then taken at certain specified times to the incinerator. The latter can easily be built under any circumstances and there can be no reason for a camp not being well supplied in this matter.
Latrines, also, must be thoroughly inspected by the officers of every unit. They should be established at some distance from the tent lines, and as far removed as possible from the kitchen. Sand and lime should be liberally supplied. The tasks of attending the latrines will normally fall to the sanitary squad who can be assisted by those who are convicted of the crime of failing to keep their lines clean. It is wonderful what a wholesome effect on a lazy man has the imposition of three days latrine duty! In the trenches this was one of the few punishments at our disposal for the slackers, for they welcomed any punishment that would send them away out of the firing line.
The same principles that have been laid down for tent life will apply more or less to life in billets. When the winter came all the troops in England and Scotland were moved into billets in towns where they could be accommodated. These were usually manufacturing towns that had numerous small homes that could each accommodate a soldier or two. From the point of view of training this is a system far from satisfactory for the men so easily get out of control. But it is the best system that we had at the time. Later on, extensive villages of huts were constructed, and the training proceeded normally.
Sometimes groups of men were assembled in large vacant houses. There was no furniture in them and the troops had to sleep on the floor. Cooking facilities were inadequate, but worst of all were the toilet facilities. These houses had been constructed to serve as the homes for average families of five to ten, and when fifty or sixty men were turned into them the result is imaginable. The same problems will probably be presented if ever American soldiers are housed in this way, and those who happen to be officers will have to exercise the greatest vigilance.
Then again we found that there are some men who have no idea of the risk they run in leaving food lying about a house or hidden away. After a certain group had moved away from Bedford, England, it was my business to go round the houses they had occupied to see if they were fit for occupation by the incoming troops. I found to my horror in one of the houses that some of the men, instead of taking surplus meat out to the garbage cans, had put it under a board in the floor! It had been there a few days when I found it, and examination of the other rooms disclosed the fact that all sorts of things from meat and bread and tins to old clothes had been hidden in similar places by these lazy fellows.