I have always wondered if soldiers in WW2 and modern soldiers bothered much about deodorizing and hygeine.
People with experience of WW2 or the recent gulf war, or just people with the knowledge - what is/was the SD on smelly soldiers.
Don’t ask my why I wondered this. I am just weird.
I know the lieutenant I dated shaved his pubes before going out in the field, to keep down on the smell.
Hey, you asked.
I was an infantryman in Gulf I. The military does care a great deal about hygeine and nothing about deodorizing. Without proper hygeine you run a bigger chance of illness and simply running down a soldier.
Even when we were low on water we always had enought to shave (so that you could get a good seal on your pro-mask) and do a whores bath (ya know: face, pits, and crotch). Also took good care of our feet (esp. being grunts and all). Lots of foot powder and tried to keep clean socks even if the rest of the uniform was shit.
That being said, we didn’t have enough water to shower from the time we went into our forward AA (28Jan) until being rotated to the rear after combat operations (14Mar). Let me tell you, 45 days without a shower sucked. When we finally did get a shower the water was black going out the drainage ditch.
I know we stunk to high heaven. After a few days you can’t tell because everyone around you stinks. I do remember we had to run back to our support battalion in early March because our Bradley had a problem with the turret. The support guys were much cleaner than we were and they couldn’t stand to be in enclosed areas or downwind from us. The turret mech didn’t even want to go inside our track because he said it stunk so bad. REMFs…:wally
Hygiene is stressed in the field to prevent health problems, but it is not always the best available. I went 60 days without a real shower, and I (and those who had to smell me) relied on washcloth baths, baby wipes, and just getting used to it. Water was not plentiful, so not much could be used in cleaning. About a bucket’s worth was used at a time. Strip to scivvies and start at the top with a washcloth and soap, and work your way down. Then put on the uniform that smelled least bad. This was maybe every third day, or until someone highly recommended you get the funk out, whichever came first.
Deodorant? I don’t recall using it much, but I may have. Luckily it was a bit chilly for the Gulf War, Part I. We wore sweaters under blouses, which cut down on the wafting of the BO downwind.
The opportunity to actually practice normal hygeine in the field is often rare. I offer you this fine anecdote of two fellow officers with a little free time, from Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers:
On that same page, Ambrose notes that E Company, 506 PIR, 101st Airborne was pulled out of the line sixty-nine days after jumping into Operation Market Garden, which began on September 17, 1944. Enlisted men never once had a chance to officially take a shower in that entire time.
Not only do soldiers smell, they have a distinctive smell, often different from that of their enemy thanks to different clothes, different food, and other… things. There are innumerable accounts from scores of wars which describe a similar phenomenon in which a soldier finds himself in close proximity to the enemy, and though he may or may not see or hear them, the writer often notes the distinctive odor of the enemy.
The smell of the enemy is not an illusion. Keeping to the scatalogical side of the story, I distinctly recall a seeing a rebroadcast of a contemporary CBS news report from Vietnam which detailed a helicopter-borne unit which attempted to “sniff” the enemy’s concentration points with chemical detectors. The detectors were looking for high concentrations of uric acid, on the premise that a bunch of guys in one place are going to mark their territory quite well.
(Other sources I’ve read claimed the “sniffer” unit killed more herds of water buffalo than it did VC or NVA. I can’t attest to the accuracy of the devices employed, just the fact that they were employed to begin with.)
You try, but there’s only so much you can do.
I served in the Danish Army, and demands on hygiene were high in barracks. But once you start in on field exercises, it gets harder, especially in adverse weather. Living outdoors in subzero (that’s subzero Fahrenheit) temperatures, high wind and drifting snow makes stripping down to wash a somewhat questionable health practice. We even had a “no shaving” rule in effect (shaving removes a protective grease layer from your skin, and under these conditions, you need all the help you can get…)
Wet wipes, disposable toothbrushes. Not so bad as long as we were out in the cold, but once we got indoors or had to exert ourselves… Hell yes, we smelled.
Getting back to barracks, hitting the showers was obviously high priority (after taking care of our weapons, vehicles and other gear, of course). And coming back to a squad room after having showered, we could thell just how much our uniforms - especially the undergarments - reeked. Of course, being 19-20 years old, we just considered it part of the image of a tough and hardened warrior…
I believe the VC spoofed those uric acid detectors by filling buckets with piss and hanging them in the middle of the jungle.