How do they wash their hands in the military if they have no running water?

Factual Questions
61

I keep my finger nails short but I do get shit under them on occasion so I would imagine the army guys would too.

62

Army guys maybe, most folks in the Air Force are smart enough to avoid it.
…
Ah, who the hell am I fooling, we’ve got our share of MEPS Vouchers in the AF too.

63

Piss tubes! And Shit-Burning Detail!

I hated the smell of burning shit in the morning!

And I can say it was good to be a Sergeant in a Land of Privates and Shit-Burning Details.

Hand washing: take a small (1/3 L) bottle of water. Take your Letherman or Gerber tool. Poke a few holes in the bottle top with the blade of your multi-tool (lets leave the Leatherman vs. Gerber debate alone, hmmm? :dubious:).

Sprinkle hands with water. Pour soft soap (or even use bar soap) on hands. Lather. Take bottle of water and rinse hands. Who gives a shit if the outside of the bottle is a little soapy?

If you do, keep transferring and rinsing hands with bottle of water. Or have a buddy do it for you, if that’s not too gay for you. When done, fill bottle with wet sand, and chuck bottle at Privates taking too long on Shit-Burning Detail.

Lest our OP get too picky, I’ve washed myself with dish soap in a plastic pan while sitting in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere Saudi Arabia for months on end, and then wahed my clothes in the same pan (still with dish soap, though; all the REMFs were bogarting the care packages with people soap and laundry soap and shit :mad:).

64

I miss the old days when you cooked, cleaned and ate out of your helmet.

65

Yeah, these newer ACH helmets won’t fit in a microwave. :frowning:

66

Forget the handwashing - how do they rinse out their delicate underthings?

67

Sand and gasoline.

68

I haven’t been to Afghanistan, but when I was grunting in the field ( many many years ago ), the only water we had was in the 2 water bottles we carried, and it didn’t get used for washing hands, or anything else. That only happened when we were by a stream or other natural water source. Basically, we were dirty.

BTW, the reason that desert peoples like the Saudis only eat with their right hands is that they didn’t have water to wash after going to the bathroom and used sand with their LEFT hand to clean their backsides after defecating.