29 replies to this topic

[anneca]

As there were no such things as washing machines at the time of the Great War, what were the logistics of keeping uniforms and underwear clean in the trenches - and being able to change into clean clothing etc?

In a book I have read about the 36^th (Ulster) Division at the Somme there are a couple of examples of personal accounts that have prompted my question.  Their uniforms must have been in a right mess.

“I don’t know how long we were in the ‘D’ line but while we were there we fought every second, there was no rest at all.  The blood had got about the tongue of our boots and our socks were soaked with it."  
(Stewart Moore – ‘Random Recollections’)

“When there is only one bearer the only way to get a wounded man out is to carry him on your back or to trail him along on a stretcher or a piece of stuff like a blanket or a strip of canvas, or even a cape or greatcoat.  It must have been painful for the wounded man but it was better than leaving him to die in the open.  Some of the men not too badly shot brought in their worse-off comrades.  Often they carried them on their backs or on a makeshift stretcher made from bits of trench facing or stretchers made from a few jackets.  You did this by turning the sleeves of the jacket inside out down the inside of the jacket, buttoned it up and put a couple of poles down the sleeves.  I’ve seen rifles used instead of poles.”

[RobL]

They had motorised bath units where the idea was the men would get a bath and their clothes washed and dried at the same time (nice cigarette card image here http://1914-1918.inv...173218&hl=baths )

They would mostly only spend a few days at a time in trenches so changing into clean clothes not a neccesity, might sound horrible to a modern reader but remember back in the day they weren't exactly having a bath or shower every day in civilian life either!

[munster]

Hi anneca in the line probably little got washed i would imagine the smell would be awful. When you think no Deoderants or Loo Roll etc.Out of the line they may have had access to mobile fumagation and bath units but not too often they may only have been out 24 to 48 hours and back in or out during the day and fatigues at night. I often heard stories of men trying to wash in rivers and lice coming off clothes being washed up stream would leave them more lousy after their wash than before. I also read on the forum somewhere recently that you could smell the german army from a distance although why they should be any worse than others i dont know.john

[bill24chev]

I beleive that when out of the line resting i.e. when in the rear areas away from the front line and immiediate rear of it, local brewerys where often used with the men taking baths in the vats and clothes being taken to be "cleaned" probably by steaming rather than washing so that they could be returned  to the troops after their ablutions.

[TRAJAN]

munster, on 22 June 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

...in the line probably little got washed...

Well my own long-term experience on archaeological excavations w/o proper washing facilities is that after a few days and weeks the bodily and dirt pongs equalise and so negate each other. I.e.,we don't know we smell until a newbie comes along who makes a comment to that effect. I would guess it was the same back in the PBI days... Now, having lice would be a different matter.

Trajan

[centurion]

!8th century saying "When everyone stinks nobody stinks"

Mobile laundry units did exist as did delousers (not always as effective as they might be).
There is a cartoon of two soldiers examining their clothes back from the delouser
1st soldier "Here some is still moving"
2nd soldier "yes but they've  'ad an 'ell of a fright"

Photo of US Army Laundry unit (British ones would be much the  same)
 us laundry_ww1.jpeg   83.95K   1 downloads

[centurion]

anneca, on 22 June 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

As there were no such things as washing machines at the time of the Great War,

The first domestic washing machine was produced by William Blackstone in 1874. Electric domestic washing machines were marketed by the Hurley Machine Company of Chicago, Illinois in 1908 this being The Mighty Thor drum washer. Industrial (laundry) washing machines were around as early as the late 1850s.

[RoyEvans]

I have a photograph of the 1/6th South Staffords boiling shirts in large cooking pots in 1915 and another of the men bathing in a farmyard cart lined with a tarpaulin.

Roy
.

[centurion]

I think there is already a thread of baths and bathing somewhere.
This shows a French water wheel driven power shower somewhere at the front.
 shower.jpg   44.41K   0 downloads

[Bombadier]

There was a thread recently about washing clothes in petrol but I can't find it now. Somebody else may have better luck.

Nigel

[centurion]

See these
http://1914-1918.inv...8
http://1914-1918.inv...75

[Tony Barton]

Great Thread.
Modern washing facilities make people forget that domestic life for most people in 1914-18 was not much more advanced than it had been for centuries.
Many houses only had a communal tap ,and one sink , and taking baths was something of an annual event . You washed with a jug and basin .Outside earth closets were still commonplace.
So cleanliness at the Front was relative : it depended on what you were used to.

Most working men changed their shirts once a week , and many still wore no underpants . I once heard an old lady recounting how she took the lining out her miner husband's trousers once a week , washed it , then sewed it back into the trousers.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that they didn't prefer to be clean , but notions of cleanliness might have been somewhat modified by expectations .
Once in the trenches everyone was pretty filthy , Lord or Labourer.
But remember that they came out of the Line after a few days : the wonder is that they ever found the facilities in their billets to get clean again( apart from the organised baths mentioned above ) .

[keithfazzani]

I think the conditions continued until well after WW2. We certainly had no washing machine when I was a child in the '50's, when we did get one it was a laborious twin tub. At boarding school we wore grey shirts that didn't show the dirt and these were changed twice a week. Incidentally when the collars wore out matron used to "turn them" to get more life out of them. Baths were if i remember correctly once, possibly twice a week at school.

[centurion]

Studies in the USA  suggest that in 1913 doing the laundry for a typical working class family absorbed ten hours a week. Soap/detergents were only one third as powerful as they are today and for most there were no mechanical aids other than possibly a mangle. A middle class family could spend up to $10 a week if they sent their washing outside the home or they had a servant and/or a new fangled (mangled?) washing machine.One reason why women used to wear white blouses was as a social statement "I can wear white - I don't have to do my own laundry". The situation would have been much the same in Britain.

[DavidB]

What the point of washing in the line when keeping alive was probably the main priority ? Moving around in mud up to your knees, human detrious, dead bodies
etc etc and one would be somewhat filthy virtually as soon as hitting the front line trench. Sleeping out in the open in mud all played their part in keeping a body
dirty. No wonder lice thrived in those conditions. The only chance a soldier had to get clean was after relief in the line and going back for a rest and a decent
shower. I think there also have been posted pics here of shower/wash rooms that were established well behind the lines.
Incidentally my g/father used to do the washing when I was younger. Large wood fired copper, clothes boiled up (especially sheets) and then scrubbed on the
ribbed washing boards with a hard scrubber. I think if current day garments were treated in the same was they wouldn't have lasted very long. Finally a run through
the hand wound mangle to wring them dry.

[CarylW]

Seems to have been some steaming of uniforms going on

From Somme Mud E P F Lynch:

'..Then we (Australian soldiers) did a march, or rather a fight through mud and traffic to a camp at Shelter Wood, near Fricourt, where we scored a hot bath and clean underclothing and had our uniforms steamed and the inside seams of our pants ironed in an effort to kill the chats (lice)...'

Another snippet from the above
'...Our first day in Cardonette and we are at a joint where hot baths are rigged up. They haven't got the great round wooden tubs like we had at Fricourt (Divisional baths) or some of those early bath joints. They have showers here, hot showers. We file along, dump our uniforms in one room, pelt our dirty underclothing and shirts into a big bin, wander around and wait for our turn under the shower. Ten of us get under together....move along a little further, get clean underclothing, then put our dirty old uniforms on again and bath night is over'

Further on in the book there are mentions of divisional baths at Harbonnieres were they obtain clean underclothes on more than one occasion and then at Fluy, their unforms are disinfected, turned inside out and ironed to 'scorch the chats to death'

Caryl

[CarylW]

From Forgotten Voices of the Somme Joshua Levine

'Sergeant Charles Quinnell 9th Battalion Royal Fusiliers...We always had at least one bath whilst we were out of the line. In pretty well every large sized French village, there was a brewery, a brasserie as they called it, and in  these brasseries there were great vats, twelve feet in diameter and about three feet deep. Well, in the boiler house there used to be some old soldiers, men in their fifties, and they'd been given the job  of stoking up the boilers and filling these vats with hot water and then we the infantry would be marched up to this brasserie. We would take off all our things in one room and leave out dirty shirts in a heap there.....we'd get out of the vats, and go to the room to the other side and pick up a clean shirt. Well, the old soldier who was in charge there, he didn't havw time to see what size you were, you had the first  shirt that came to you...'

Also a mention in the book of them using sugar factory vats for bathing. I've read about the sugar factory vats on the Somme recently when I was there but can't remember where they were, or where I read about them. I know I intended to try to find out if anything remained of the sugar factory but didn't get around to it at that time


In 'When the Somme ran red' Arthur Radclyffe, the author states 'The British Tommy has a mania for washing' and goes on to decribe finding some of his men bathing in a large pool full of dead rats

In Sapper Martin Richard Van Emden

'..We are marched down to the brasserie which has been converted into baths; before entering we start to disrobe for an RAMC man who stands at the door yelling 'Take your boots and puttees off outside' ...admits us into an ante-room where we stow away our boots puttees, overcoat, cap etc in places where we hope to be able to find them later on.....(after the bath)....we pick up our dirty underclothing and trot to the Exchange Room where, if we are lucky we get a clean article for each dirty one we hand in. Generally, there are 'no clean shirts' or 'No clean pants' or 'No clean socks' and to get a clean towel  is an occasion to be marked as a red letter day, while a complete change is almost unheard of...'

Caryl

[John(txic)]

Origin of the term "Pongoes", ISTR: where the Army goes, the pong goes....

I'll get my coat....

[TRAJAN]

keithfazzani, on 22 June 2012 - 09:24 PM, said:

...At boarding school we wore grey shirts that didn't show the dirt and these were changed twice a week...

We had them grey shirts at my infant/junior day school as well in the 1950's - always wondered why they chose that colour!

Oh, and yes, thanks John (txic) - I had quite forgotten that wonderful term 'pngoes'!

Trajan

[centurion]

rgartillery, on 22 June 2012 - 10:40 PM, said:

What the point of washing in the line when keeping alive was probably the main priority ? Moving around in mud up to your knees, human detrious, dead bodies
etc etc and one would be somewhat filthy virtually as soon as hitting the front line trench.

Trenches were often muddy but not all the trenches and not all of he time. Apart from in the middle of an assault they were policed as well as possible and dead bodies were certainly not lying around nor normally human detritus.

[centurion]

John(txic), on 23 June 2012 - 06:08 AM, said:

Origin of the term "Pongoes", ISTR: where the Army goes, the pong goes....

Mmm - I always believed that Pongo came from the Genus  Pongo or Great Apes and was a somewhat unkind comparison made by sailors of soldiers with the Gibraltar  Apes (which are in fact large monkeys)

[anneca]

This is an absolutely amazing response to my topic.  Thank you all for taking time to post very interesting responses.

LF your cigarette card images are brilliant, I thoroughly enjoyed looking at them.

Munster, I would totally agree with you that very little got washed and the smell would have been dreadful.  Bill has made a good point about the clothes being 'steamed' but whether they were actually clean after this is another matter.

Caryl, wonderful quotes and extremely interesting information, thank you for sharing these.

Anne

[anneca]

RobL, on 22 June 2012 - 03:13 PM, said:

They had motorised bath units where the idea was the men would get a bath and their clothes washed and dried at the same time (nice cigarette card image here http://1914-1918.inv...173218&hl=baths )

They would mostly only spend a few days at a time in trenches so changing into clean clothes not a neccesity, might sound horrible to a modern reader but remember back in the day they weren't exactly having a bath or shower every day in civilian life either!

Thanks RobL for this link which was very interesting.
Anne

[anneca]

RoyEvans, on 22 June 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

I have a photograph of the 1/6th South Staffords boiling shirts in large cooking pots in 1915 and another of the men bathing in a farmyard cart lined with a tarpaulin.

Roy
.

Is it too forward of me to ask if you would consider posting your photos Roy?
Anne

[anneca]

Tony Barton, on 22 June 2012 - 08:14 PM, said:

Great Thread.
Modern washing facilities make people forget that domestic life for most people in 1914-18 was not much more advanced than it had been for centuries.
Many houses only had a communal tap ,and one sink , and taking baths was something of an annual event . You washed with a jug and basin .Outside earth closets were still commonplace.
So cleanliness at the Front was relative : it depended on what you were used to.

Most working men changed their shirts once a week , and many still wore no underpants . I once heard an old lady recounting how she took the lining out her miner husband's trousers once a week , washed it , then sewed it back into the trousers.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that they didn't prefer to be clean , but notions of cleanliness might have been somewhat modified by expectations .
Once in the trenches everyone was pretty filthy , Lord or Labourer.
But remember that they came out of the Line after a few days : the wonder is that they ever found the facilities in their billets to get clean again( apart from the organised baths mentioned above ) .

Tony, We tend to forget some of these things.  Other points you have made, such as working men changing only once a week, come as more of a surprise - we tend to think everyone back then had the same facilities to wash and shower as we have today. (You have brought me back down to earth again - thank you)
Anne