Quote:
Originally posted by Vets Dottir
Hello MLU-ers 
HOW DID THE GUYS AND GALS DEAL WITH GETTING THEIR CLOTHES/UNIFORMS CLEANED (when they were able to deal with laundry that is) ??? Living in dirty clothes must have happened a lot ... and I wonder if lice and such were a problem? Clean clothes and a bath must have been godsends sometimes?
Karmen
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Karmen, I can tell you that the modern day Canadian Forces take hygiene very seriously. At the many field exercises I participated in the first thing up after the tents was the L.B.U. The Canadian Military Engineers have a "standardized" small L.B.U. which is a wooden floored platform under a Weather Haven tent which uses 4 electric hot water tanks ganged together to provide (hopefully) enough hot water for a camp of about 100 personnel. These small L.B.U.'s are a little on the primitive side...no heat!, but they do their job. Just don't forget to bring a large generator for the washers, dryers, and H.W.T.'s! The whole thing takes down into an M.L.V.W. size load. (Medium Logistic Vehicle Wheeled)
In 1998 we trialed the use of a much larger L.B.U. They were made by a company in Ontario and consisted of 4 container sized rooms that were placed in an X pattern with a flexible connection to form a large L.B.U. with four wings, with an additional container carrying a very large diesel engine and generator...around 750 Kva if memory serves me right. This large L.B.U. along with one small L.B.U. quite capably served a camp of over 1,000 personnel.
Everybody knows the official motto of the Engineers right? Ubique, which means everywhere ( unlike the Artillery's Ubique which means all over the place!) But did you know that the Engineers have an unofficial motto? It's: It takes an Infanteer to be uncomfortable in the field! Witness Cougar Salvo 2000; a large field exercise held at Fort Lewis, Washington. Our Engineer unit was tasked with providing support for all the reserve Armour, Infantry, and Field Engineer units from B.C. that were participating. During our pre-exercise briefing it was announced that we were to spend a week in the field with no shower facilities and even worse, it was to be a dry exercise! No alcohol! Tabernac went our French Canadian comrades! Just field expedient towel baths! All the N.C.M.s looked at each other...bulls**t on this! Very next day I grabbed one of our plumbers and we changed the jets on a natural gas H.W.T. to propane, hooked it up to a 120v. electric pump and built a crate around it and a small generator. Our MWO questioned what was in the crate as we loaded our kit on the trucks...just additional shovels and picks Sir! (he loved to see us dig!) We didn't want him to open the crate as in addition to the H.W.T. we had stashed our section's beer and rum! We Engineers were the envy of the entire camp as stories of the hot showers and cold beer in that modular tent way off in the corner of the camp circulated throughout the exercise! The MWO turned out to be not such a bad sort after all...our tea-totalling transport Sargeant caught us imbibing in our shower/mess tent and promptly stomped off to report our activity to the MWO. The Sargeant threw open the flap of the C.P. tent just in time to see the MWO pouring the C.O. and himself a Scotch!
CHIMO!