I have tried it while camping and it didn’t work.
But you can use a piece of cloth, either to wet it and rinse the hands, or to grab the bottle (canteens are often already cloth-covered).
I’m curious about why were you asking specifically about the military and specifically about their hands. There are millions of people who don’t have access to running water, I expect that soldiers who are “on location and living locally” (as opposed to getting bottled water flown in or purified in situ) would start by copying whatever methods the locals use, same as, say, people with the Peace Corps do.
What doe sthe OP mean by “no running water”? Does that include this? Because any military camp with access to logistical vehicles will get one of these, or something like it.
They aren’t very good at removing dirt/grime from hands, and if there are dirt/grime on hands they are less effective at sanitizing. But alcohol-based hand sanitizers certainly do some level of sanitizing (just like washing with soap and water, obviously nothing perfectly sanitizes ones hands.) The CDC recommends soap and water as the preferred way, but specifically says alcohol based hand sanitizers are a good tool if you do not have access to running water.
Aside from not being good at removing dirt/grime, the biggest reason soap and water are considered better is because it is more effective against most of the types of bacteria that most commonly cause illnesses. But studies have shown that alcohol-based hand sanitizer is actually more effective than hand washing for some pathogens.
I also find the OP’s interest in this a bit strange. Surely the OP understands that sometimes in war cleanliness takes a back seat to more pressing matters? That’s the reality.
This article may or may not be behind a paywall (I can’t tell if it’s one of the free ones) but it describes some of the more unpleasant things soldiers in the initial invasion of Iraq had to deal with and not washing their hands would not even rate a mention.
A small excerpt:
You are talking about active combat but there are army bases where they have to stay for months or years in the mountains of Afghanistan with no running water where all supplies have to be airlifted.
Until about 150 years ago, nobody on earth had running water. Yet people survived, and even flourished (population explosion).
So it either isn’t that hard to wash your hands without running water, or … it isn’t that important a survival trait.
As people have already mentioned, in WWII many soldiers went days or weeks without being able to do any kind of washing at all. And they survived.
I’m familiar with supply of forward deployed bases and the concept of a military base. But again, these are people deployed in a war zone, the tone of your posts just seems like you think it’s a huge deal that they may not wash their hands all the time or something. In general you can assume people need to drink water to survive, and if you have water you can wash your hands. That much should be obvious. It should also be obvious hand washing may sometimes go by the wayside in situations like that.
In the Army, we wash our hands after we pee.
In the Marines, they taught on not to pee on our hands.
In the Navy, we pee on each others’ hands to wash them.
::rimshot::
Practice, practice, practice.
You’re doing it wrong. Try again.
The military is known for being obsessive about cleanliness.
I think you have some misconceptions about the level of cleanliness your average soldier will have in a war zone.
Also, I’m not seeing why you’re having much trouble with the water bottle thing. I’ve done it hundreds of times. It won’t get you prepped for surgery, but it gets the job done. A little soap on the exterior of the bottle is an issue?
As others have said, certain concessions have to be made and “cleanliness” doesn’t necessarily mean scrubbing stuff down with warm soapy water until it’s squeaky clean. A soldier’s life is one of many compromises.
In the barracks, maybe. Not in the field.
After biting the head from a chicken, most Marines will use chicken blood in lieu of water. Other indiginous rodents are sometimes substituted.
This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wnGEPXshmM says in the army they have to wash their plates and pots and pans before and after they use them, while in the field. Seems like cleanliness is pretty important to them even in combat.
Reality and circa 1945 training films (cartoons?) aren’t always in agreement.
Yeah, I’m having trouble figuring out the difficulty inherent in washing your hands by yourself with a bottle of water. And if, for some reason, you can’t get all the soap off, so what?
You noticed the guy never actually washed his hands, though.
While they might have done that when they could, I’m sure there were lots of time during combat when they weren’t able to be as scrupulous as they liked. The same goes today.