One section
of the shack is divided off for a bathroom with a number of showers
and the other rooms devoted to the receiving of dirty clothing,
storing the clean clothing, washing, drying and sterilizing.
As you pass along the road you will see perhaps a platoon or a section
of a platoon marching to the bath house, without belt or equipment,
and carrying towels. At the bath house a certain number, say twenty
men, pass into the first room where they undress. Their underclothes
and shirts are thrown to one side to be washed; their caps and boots
are not treated in any way. The uniforms are hung on numbered racks
and placed in the disinfection chamber where they are immediately
treated with live steam, or they are taken into an adjoining room
where the seams are ironed with hot irons to destroy lice and eggs.
The men then pass on into the bathroom where they are given about ten
minutes to luxuriate with plenty of soap and hot water. As they pass
out of the bath through another room they are given clean socks,
underclothes and shirts, and by the time they are dressed their own
uniforms, disinfected, are handed back to them. The whole operation
takes from twenty-five to thirty minutes, and from a thousand to
fifteen hundred men can be put through each bath house in a day.
The discarded clothes are washed by local peasant women paid by the
army; in one of these establishments in our area there were 160
Belgian peasant women engaged in this work.
Pages:
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170