Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 167, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1915 — BRITISH MEDICS SEE 1,000 BATHED A DAY [ARTICLE]

BRITISH MEDICS SEE 1,000 BATHED A DAY

Surgeons Direct Washing of Men from Trenches In Huge Vats in Brewery. London. —One side of warfare which has its rise from the difficulties of trench fighting is the necessity of washing the men after they have served a term in the mud and water with which the ditches are filled. At the conclusion of the trench work their clothing must all be laundered and they have to be refitted completely. An officer of the British Medical Corps in a letter to the London Times says: “Yesterday I had a new job. I have been put with my 36 bearers in a brewery, and our job is this: When a brigade comes out of the trenches the men are very muddy and dirty. We have to see to the washing of the men. They are to come in to me by fifties. They go up to a big room on the second floor and undress, then they all go down to the basement, where there are 50 tubs of water. They wash there and then go upstairs and dry themselves. “Meanwhile their clothes have been taken and sorted out. Those used up and torn are destroyed and the remainder are sorted out and packed in a wagon and sent 200 yards down the road to another brewery, where there are 24 washerwomen who wash and Iron all the clothes. The men are supplied with all clean things—at first with new, but later on those sent to the washerwomen are ready for use, and so on it goes. , “We start work at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning and will go on until 5 o’clock without a break; 1,000 men a day we have got to do. As you can imagine we are very busy. We have to scrub the brewery out from top to bottom, wash out 50 tubs and we are having 2,000 towels, 500 pounds of soap, 12 acetylene lamps, 500 pairs of pants, shirts, socks, etc., so you can see it is a big business. “I am jolly well pleased to get it The boys are working awfully well, and we had a topping dinner yesterday, awfully well cooked, and I am feeling very fit. The guns are booming all around us, and It looks like continual lightning at night. The shells make an awful shindy, but we are quite happy here. It seems to me the medicals here do anything that turns up. I am having a most varied career.”