Personel Needs

[Texas Lizard]

Today we all have one in house...Years back you out the back to the little house...And if you were on the trail, behind any bush or tree...Now I am wondering, Indian camps...Small, not a problem...Quick to find something away from area...But now, what about large camp and tents/teepee...You might have a long walk for that need....And hope you didn't eat something wrong....Now what???

 

Any ideas...

 

Texas Lizard

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

Armies have been dealing with this since warfare existed, and that has existed ever since there were people. As you may have seen from my posts on the Wire, I am a Revolutionary War buff, Civil War buff, and all around history buff. I'm also a military officer. I've read a lot of George Washington's original papers, in which he discussed all the time he devoted to seemingly menial things like field sanitation. These basics took a LOT of his time, because very few of his officers had ever experienced extended campaigns (don't forget he served as a Major in the British army during the 7 Years War). They were mostly militiamen who turned out for an Indian fight and then went home, so they had never contended with these problems. I read one historian whose book on the war was awesome ("Almost a Miracle"), except for the fact that the author was shocked at how much time Washington devoted to these problems. In his one page coverage of the topic, it became readily apparent that he (the author) had never himself served, and had no concept of the immense problem that human waste can present if a unit stays in one place for more than a day.

 

My own experience in dealing with this was as the "mayor" of a brigade support area in Iraq in 2003. Including attachments, we had over 500 personnel confined to one location for 7 months of our year on the ground. On average, if you estimate that each person does a #2 once per day, that's 500 TURDS EVERY DAY of which you have to dispose, not to mention all the #1 being generated. To this day, the smell of diesel fuel and poop in my nostrils is one I'll never forget.

 

To a 21 year (and counting) veteran such as myself, things like field sanitation come as second nature. We have procedures in place to burn it, truck it away, or what not, depending on the type of logistics support we have available or how well / poorly developed our base of operations is. We even have standardized ways to build crappers once we can lay our hands on some plywood and 2X4s; we bring the toilet seats with us.

 

In the most austere locations, however, we just dig a slit trench. It's not complicated; it's just a hole in the ground. I imagine most Indian tribes did the same, since diesel fuel wasn't readily available yet.