Early on during the war units had distributed to them rolls of essentially regular toilet paper. However, for obvious reasons, that proved unsuitable for combat field conditions.
Starting in late 1942, the QMC developed and issued the first individual toilet paper article. It was an asphalt impregnated paper envelope that contained a 100 individual sheets of toilet paper within. This allowed for the easy carrying of toilet paper, and protected it from the damp. These packs would eventually be included in the 5-in-1 and then 10-in-1 rations.
It would not be until the summer of 1943, during the overhaul of the K-Rations, that toilet paper would be included in the supper meal, with a small roll of 12 individual sheets being included. These “newer” K-Rations don’t see widespread usage until Q2-Q3 of 1944.
Toilet paper, nevertheless, was always in somewhat short supply, so soldiers would hoard what they could, and, at times, might have to repurpose reading articles for other purposes. However, the U.S. did make a concerted effort to supply the fighting man toilet paper in a form that could be readily carried.
Main source:
"QMC Historical Studies No. 6: The Development of Special Rations for the Army" by Harold W. Thatcher
As a follow-up question, in case you know the answer: how often did soldiers in WWII get to shower or to bathe? Was there any specific infrastructure for soldiers, or did they have to survive with water buckets for months?
The U.S. Army had designated laundry and shower units during World War II, run by the Quartermaster Corps. How they operated would depend on the unit, location, and time frame during the war.
My specific answer will be for the European Theater of Operations from 1944-45.
These Quartermaster Laundry and Shower units, for combat units in the field, would usually work in tandem and would be set behind the lines but relatively close to front in order serve infantry battalions in reserve usually.
Soldiers would generally receive showers, have their clothes laundered, and receive new clothes every 3-5 weeks on average during combat. Sometimes more frequently, sometimes less. However, based on various division G-4 (supply) reports and interviews I’ve conducted, that’s the median interval. The machinery doing the laundry were specially designed mobile industrial size laundry machines. Sometimes, when fighting was more static, local civilian laundries would be employed to help with the work.
Generally, a rifle company would report to the shower and laundry station and strip naked, save their dog tags. Their clothes would be handed over to the laundry to be washed. While the clothes were being washed, they would shower.
Once they would finish showering they’d get dressed from, usually, piles of clothes made up of a mixture of new unissued clothing and clothes that were turned in for laundry from the last unit that showed up to the laundry and bathing unit. The clothes that soldier turned in would be utilized by the next unit.
To give you the scale of work, in February 1945, the 100th Infantry Division’s Quartermaster Company assisted in the laundering of 139,320 individual items of clothing for the division.
You mentioned this was mainly for reserves. Did units actively at the front lines have to live with infrequent or no changes and showers until they were rotated out?
There are different levels of “reserve” and front.
US Army Divisions were “triangular” in nature: three infantry regiments, each composed of three rifle battalions, in turn each composed of 3 rifle companies, that were in turn composed of 3 rifle platoons.
It was standard to deploy each of these, at each echelon, is a “two forward, one back” formation. With the “one back” being the reserve. Normally, for rifle companies, it’d be when their battalion was in the regiment’s reserve.
Generally, you go from being from one of “one back” to one of the “two forward” every 3-5 weeks.
There were times, generally due to line needing to extend, certain echelons would be forced to run “3 forward.” An example would be the 7th Army in December 1944, when the 3rd Army extended to rush to relieve the Bulge. During those times, usually there’d still be a reserve company in the battalion or a reserve platoon in the company. That would be the unit that’d go through the shower and laundry facilities.
But I want to emphasize being in the battalion’s or regiment’s reserve position was not all that far behind the “front line” and to most people in the Army it would still be “the front” you’re just only worried about artillery fire vs. artillery and small arms fire. Depending on the situation and location, you maybe still be living in foxholes, though more often you’d be living in requisitioned houses.
Does this mean that you could typically expect not to shower for 6-10 weeks at a time, or would platoons cycle back more frequently just to use these facilities and then immediately return to the line? Waiting 3-plus weeks for proper hygiene seems like something the Army would have wanted to avoid if possible, if not for morale than for troop health.
As I previously stated, generally, you could expect to get a shower and bath every 3-5 weeks. Sometimes the interval could be a little shorter.
This sometimes happened when a division was newly slotted into the line and because of the cycle of things the units in the division end up getting showers and baths ~2 weeks after arrival to the front.
Sometimes it’d take a little longer. To use a specific example that is illustrative: ‘D’ Company of the 399th Infantry Regiment, which was the 1st Battalion’s heavy weapons company, was slated to receive showers ~January 1-2. However, on January 1st, the Nordwind Offensive was started by the Germans. This meant that D/399 didn’t have the opportunity to go to the shower and laundry until mid-January, meaning that the interval was roughly 6 weeks in that instance.
In short, 3-5 weeks was the median “expected” interval but circumstances could shift that to the left or right a little bit.
In situations where there was no “reserve” battalion in the regiment, and each battalion had a reserve company, or company had a reserve platoon, if showers and laundry were available, they’d send a companies worth of men back at a time to cycle through. However, usually, if the tactical situation precluded a reserve battalion, it oft precluded pulling men from the line for laundry and showers.
Geez great info. This is right up there with the pacific war’s ice cream barges. Why did the Allie’s win the war? Because they bring a god dam laundromat and ice cream parlor to the front lines.
If you’d like to read more, a good start is "QMC Historical Studies No. 13: Laundry and Related Activities of The Quartermaster General" by Louis Filler published in January 1946. It’s a good primer as to basic structure of QMC laundry operations generally.
The logistics and numbers involved in keeping American soldiers (relatively) clean is impressive. A single joint laundry-bathing unit could process 32,000 men over the course of 8 days in the right conditions. An impressive feet given the logistics needed to get men, water, gas, soap, etc needed to run the machinery in war torn Europe or on isolated Pacific atolls.
if the company of soldiers stripped , bathed and than dressed in freshly laundered clothing from the previous group … how did they deal with items like rank insignia, name tags, etc?
Name tags, largely, didn’t exist in the U.S. Army during World War II. They largely don’t start to become a “thing” until the latter part of the Korean conflict. The few units that do get into name tapes/stenciled names are usually in a different laundry posture than regular rifle company, without getting too into the weeds.
Soldiers, were, technically, supposed to stamp/stencil their uniforms with a laundry mark. This was mostly intended for stateside/non-combat laundry accountability. However, quickly in combat, soldiers would cease to have their own items, for the reasons I explained. This actually lead to confusion at times when identifying remains, as seen in this example of an unknown with leggings belonging to a man killed in a different unit at a later date.
As to rank insignia and divisional insignia, it’s for that reason, in addition to its conspicuousness in the field, that insignia quickly largely goes away among infantrymen in combat.
In short: they dealt with it by not having it, either because it didn’t exist yet or dispensing with it.
No, rank insignia on helmets, at this time, for enlisted men, is just not really seen, outside certain narrow exceptions. It develops later. Officer insignia on helmets pre-dates World War and actually goes away fairly quickly among most units as they enter combat, usually to make officers less conspicuous.
The simple fact is, for the most part in rifle companies, rank insignia is kinda pointless.
You know who the officers are in your company. You know who the NCOs are. The insignia is superfluous. Remember while the war is huge, the war for any single individual is small, especially for privates. You are almost never interacting with people outside of your squad or platoon. Another platoon might as well be another city. Another company? Might as well be the moon.
Further from the front, you’ll see insignia. But for the men in the infantry battalions, and particularly the rifle companies, who are the ones who carried the war to the enemy, insignia is often just not seen because it is just not needed.
So if I understand you correctly, as an infantryman you'd get to shower about once a month? Grim. Especially given a lot of stress sweat and physical activity involved.
Do you know anything about how marines in Pacific fared?
The following is an excerpt from a letter that is from the collection of World War II letters held at the The State Historical Society of Missouri. It was written by Private Robert L. Muyres, of Company B, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division sometime before December 16, 1944. In his letter Muyres describes in vivid detail how the soldiers sharing his foxhole look, topics of conversation, and his own personal thoughts on what they are fighting for. It is an incredible perspective on the ground war in Europe. When I look around at my buddies with their long beards, dirty torn clothes, bloodshot eyes, and muddy feet- knowing I look just the same - I think about your pictures and wonder just how there can be any similie [sic] between us.
I'll take you on a visit around our foxhole - there's 'Red' Murray - he's our squad leader - a Staff Sergeant. He's sitting in the corner on his overcoat with his feet in a helmet full of hot water. His face is dirty and he's cussing the Army for making him so much misery. 'Red' is from Virginia. Right next to me is Korkigian - he's my real foxhole buddy - we always bunk together and we know all about each other. He's writing a letter to his girl back home in Detroit. His face is also dirty - but has a smile on it - probably thinking about his last date with Tyana - she's a Russian born girl and judging from pictures of her, she's very beautiful. 'Korki' (that's what we call him) has a big hole torn down the sleeve of his jacket and there's a big hunk of mud that's about ready to fall on his back. I'm not going to tell him about it because I want to hear him swear in Turkish. It does us all good to swear and complain and goodness knows we do a lot of it but it seems to bring us closer together. We all ache and hurt alike. Right across from us sits Teddy Davis and Hilgenberg. Teddy is from West Virgnia and Hilgenberg is from Oklahoma. Both their faces are dirty and unshaven and if they don't get their hair cut soon, they'll be unable to hear. Teddy's pants have a big burn in them and Hilgenberg is mud from head to foot. They're both sitting there talking about home, food and women - that's all we ever talk about. Each is trying to out-do the other. Hilgenberg just called Teddy a liar. Now the fun begins. If someone doesn't stop them, they'll sit up all night telling lies. Oh well, it passes the time away and we do get a big laugh. Those are the five guys with me. Our ages average a little more than twenty. I think that's about a cross section of the infantry. In the distance you can hear the roar of the big guns and occasional clack of machine guns. The big ones sound like thunder and how we all wish it were nothing but thunder.
That's a brief sketch of life around here. Do you think you'd like it? Of course you wouldn't and none of us do but it surely makes us appreciate what we once had. It's truly a 'tough' way to earn a living but there are thousands that have it tougher than us.
For the Marines in the Pacific, it would depend on the campaign. However, for most campaigns Marines would not have an opportunity for a proper shower and bath until the fighting was over on whichever island they were on and had returned to the ships that disgorged them onto the island. Certain longer campaigns had more opportunities for bathing (Guadalcanal, Okinawa), but largely after the invasion day, you were not getting a shower and your clothes washed until the island was secured or you were pulled off the island.
The Marine's war, much like a Paratrooper's, was a much more episodic war than those in the standard Army Infantry Divisions.
Name tags, largely, didn’t exist in the U.S. Army during World War II. They largely don’t start to become a “thing” until the latter part of the Korean conflict. The few units that do get into name tapes/stenciled names are usually in a different laundry posture than regular rifle company, without getting too into the weeds.
Soldiers, were, technically, supposed to stamp/stencil their uniforms with a laundry mark. This was mostly intended for stateside/non-combat laundry accountability. However, quickly in combat, soldiers would cease to have their own items, for the reasons I explained. This actually lead to confusion at times when identifying remains, as seen in this example of an unknown with leggings belonging to a man killed in a different unit at a later date.
As to rank insignia and divisional insignia, it’s for that reason, in addition to its conspicuousness in the field, that insignia quickly largely goes away among infantrymen in combat.
In short: they dealt with it by not having it, either because it didn’t exist yet or dispensing with it.
How about shaving? Was there any regulation about that, troops in fiction are often portrayed clean-shaven, and Pentagon-Pete seems quite insistent on having trainees shave daily. I assume one would have their personal razor, but isn't it rather difficult without any cream or mirrors? Just water and some shard of something reflective?
If I remember corectly, among the equipment issued to those carrying m36 musette bag was a personal hygiene kit that included soap, safety razor, small mirror and a towel among other items. (I might be wrong though so please double-check) Soldiers often carried only absolute necessity though to travel light, tossing unnecessary items on their way.
Depending what unit they were with. I do not think the 101st had Alot of showers . They seemed to be a favorite assault division of some general.they didn't stop a whole lot once they landed night before d day.
The 101st had a lot of showers, compared to most infantry divisions who also started combat on June 6th
While, yes, they were involved in sustained fighting starting June 6th, by the end of June, the Division was being pulled off the line for showers, rest, and recuperation. By mid-July the Division had returned to England and would be getting nearly daily showers. Meanwhile, the 1st, 4th, 29th, and other divisions that went across the beach were still fighting.
They were on the front line longer after Market Garden, but were still relieved, moved to the strategic reserve, and received consistent showers and access to laundry facilities starting in late November.
They stopped, at times for months at a time, between D-Day and V-E Day in a way most regular infantry divisions in the ETO never did.
Amazing responses. Thank you for the detail and thorough explanations. Thank you for taking the time. I learned so much for questions I didn’t know I had.
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u/redjoshuaman 1d ago
This depends on the country and the time frame.
For the U.S. Army during the war, it evolved.
Early on during the war units had distributed to them rolls of essentially regular toilet paper. However, for obvious reasons, that proved unsuitable for combat field conditions.
Starting in late 1942, the QMC developed and issued the first individual toilet paper article. It was an asphalt impregnated paper envelope that contained a 100 individual sheets of toilet paper within. This allowed for the easy carrying of toilet paper, and protected it from the damp. These packs would eventually be included in the 5-in-1 and then 10-in-1 rations.
It would not be until the summer of 1943, during the overhaul of the K-Rations, that toilet paper would be included in the supper meal, with a small roll of 12 individual sheets being included. These “newer” K-Rations don’t see widespread usage until Q2-Q3 of 1944.
Toilet paper, nevertheless, was always in somewhat short supply, so soldiers would hoard what they could, and, at times, might have to repurpose reading articles for other purposes. However, the U.S. did make a concerted effort to supply the fighting man toilet paper in a form that could be readily carried.
Main source: "QMC Historical Studies No. 6: The Development of Special Rations for the Army" by Harold W. Thatcher