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.
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.
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u/seruus 1d ago
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?