I have read many a book over the years on ww1 and as yet i cant say that i have ever read one that goes into detail if at all about how horrific it must have been. What the sanitation conditions were like .Its like not that it needs to be brought up, I am just curious as to if anybody has read books that have at least a mention as to what they did to make things that little bit better .As the mud etc gets a mention about up to knees etc but not when you have to go nothing mentioned.Not the best topic a round but one thats never mentioned.
Thanks MC

Click here for a thread on the subject.

Latrine discipline - by which I mean standards of hygiene as applied to the siting ( woops - watch my spelling here !) of latrines and use thereof - was of a high standard in the British army. Virtue born of necessity, and largely inspired by the defec(a)tive customs of the Boer War and other earlier conflicts, when many had died from enteric diseases.

Incidentally - we don't often hear about this - some of the soldiers suffered from constipation. Fear sometimes caused men to tense up; no doubt some were inhibited, particularly, I would guess, men from a relatively genteel backgound.

Phil

I have no doubt that stress and the sheer discomfort of using the latrine would play a part in constipation, Phil but also, men's liquid intake would be restricted and this would also contribute.

As usual I report from the Hunnish side of the fence. I used to collect lots of photos, post cards, etc. of the German Army, and there were many photos of very elaborate facilities, often draped with one or two dozen men "doing No. 2". Also photos of many men washing together, often displaying the "full Monty". And most of these were postcards and evidentally were sent thru the post. But I think that there was less modesty than in other countries. There were nude public bathing beaches in Germany in 1900. Today I understand that there are more "official" nudists in Germany than anywhere else. I remember when there was a heat wave 20 years ago and it was estimated that, at any given time, there were 30,000 nude people walking about the streets, including men walking to work in government agencies. (And Bonn was /is a small town.)

Living up to stereotypes, German trench facilities, dugouts, etc. were often very elaborate and refined, and many Allied memoires remark on their surprise as to this. I assume that their "facilities"were elaborate. The Brits seemed to tend to build haphazard trench structures, but I also agree that they were professional and paid a lot of attention to these matters. I read many accounts, including British, at unpleasant surprises regarding the state of French trenches. But many WW I memoires record surprise at the Lack of French attention to this topic. Many accounts describe people in French villages having no facilities, and simply wandering outside to do their business. Some of this might be a local "tradition", not general, but many writers have commented on this. (I appologize to any French who have read this and are up in arms, so to speak, but I have read of this too many times to feel that there is not a grain of truth.)

As for the Eastern Front, the conditions were astonishingly bad. My grand-father's letters are very explicit. Although a staff officer, in less that a year his health was broken by the terrible, unhealthy conditions. He wrote: "You only have to look at a bed, and you are covered by lice."

German divisions took one day longer to travel from the Eastern Front to the West, compared to the trip going East, due to the elaborate disinfection of the troops and uniforms required when leaving Russian territory.

Bob Lembke

Well looks as if after the lessons of the earlier campaigns ,that things were better as to constipation this was probably cured by some of the shelling.!!!
Hard to say what was regarded as good for a trench warfare (latrine wise),with the rain ,mud ,rats,flies,lice,being wet, damp,cold,soaked in water,shelling etc .But by the comments they did the best they could .Still ,must have still been pretty bad
Thanks for the comments on a not so frequent topic .I did find the other thread with pictures interesting until you put in my list of nasties to ruin it
MC

Rural life was probably primitive almost everywhere. Certainly there were some remote farmhouses in Britain that had no purpose built privy. An uncle of mine acquired a farm up in the Trough of Bowland in the late 1950s that had none - apparently a corner of the cattle yard was used and everything swept up at the same time [I don't need to tell you what my Aunt very firmly designated as his first priority]. In the 18th and 19th century rural squalor was every bit as wretched as city squalor (but more scenic and romantic).

Reading some memoires of German officers who served in the East during the Napoleonic period the Polish and Russian (and doubtless the Ukrainian) louse was regarded as a fearsome beast even then. [In the Peninsular the louse took a back seat to the Spanish flea - one British officer being so tormented that he shot himself].

Indeed given the conditions on the Western Front and the huge numbers of men involved I am always surprised that there were not mass casualties through sickness exceeding those caused by enemy action.

My maternal grand-parents lived in a semi-rural enviroment outside of Berlin, and were rather affluent, so they put in indoor plumbing, and the family oral history has it that the neighbors were shocked, sort of like: "Can you believe that they are actually doing it in the house!" But I am sure that there were privies.

A friend at graduate school, Donny Sullivan, son of an immigrant, went to Ireland for a visit to stay on his uncle's farm, this was the early 1960's, and he was quite surprised that there was no privy; the family just wandered out and did their business. When he mentioned it to his father's brother, his uncle responded: "Donny, 'm boy, just think of the entire world as a toilet, with the paper (i.e., the grass) growing up all about ye."

Anyone visit the 46 seat facility at Epheses (mis-spelled, I am sure) in Turkey, outside the stadium where St. Paul was booed for six hours by the idol-makers? It has a podium in the middle for a musical combo who played soothing cover music to the assembled crowd to play over natural gurgles and the like.

Bob

Bob yes i did in 1998 we(wife) went to turkey and Epheses i cant say i remember the amount of seats but remember the holes and the podium for the "music "I dont like going to a public toilet if anybody is next to me let alone in the open with dozens of others .I also remember the set up for water going around so you could wash afterward s amazing .But getting back to the latrine bit ww1 this would have been heaven even without the music etc in the middle or running water.
MC