Posted on 05/19/2009 9:18:17 AM PDT by franksolich
I'm not surprised that these records were badly photocopied. The photocopy machines they used in 1869 must have been difficult to operate.
I still remember my week in Bangkok.I have a friend that goes there about 3 times a year.My wife said Icould go over
my dead body.Oh,well.
Nah, these were photocopies of the originals made back when if one photocopied something, the black ink came out white, and the white background came out black, and repeatedly photocopied over the years.
I assume the 1950s, perhaps?
Of course this isn't Skins's island; no one here's old enough to remember when photocopies came out in reverse.
In the military after the Civil War, the woman who performed the laundry duties were often as not wives of the enlisted personnel. In most instances they also did the laundry for the officers, unless an officer had a wife on post willing to do it for him.
If a post didn’t have sufficient enlisted men’s wives on post, then they’d have to contract out, or detail enlisted personnel to do the chore. The second option would be the most likely. The military back then spent money very grudgingly. (Even in the 1870’s they were still issuing hard tack made during the Civil War...)
In the field, all bets were off and the men, officers included became pretty “gamy” unless camped by sufficient water.
In the Navy we stuck our whites in one bag, our colors in a different bag and put them in the passageway. After three days they came back all in one bag and all the same color.
When the desert tan flight suits got washed with the red T-shirts, the resulting pink flight suits were really manly.
These days the US doesn’t hire any more laundry ladies or mama-sans. Our politicians get the military to award huge contracts for laundry, latrines, etc to their buddies at KBR for $100/load. We should just go back to the old way and find some mama-sans in Iraq to do our laundry for $2. Or at least help the Iraqi mama-sans bid on laundry contracts!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/17/eveningnews/main636644.shtml
“Documents obtained by CBS News show an auditor repeatedly flagged improper fees for soldiers’ laundry. At one site, taxpayers reportedly paid $100 for each 15-pound load of wash - $1 million a month in overcharges.”
“Halliburton insists it doesn’t waste money, it saves it. But overcharging is the subject of one federal investigation and there are separate probes for alleged bribery and kickbacks. “
There is indeed a free-of-charge post laundry, but it's typically only used by soldiers in school, such as Basic Training, the various NCO academies, etc. Here's the Army's laundry slip.
When you're in the field for less than 6-8 weeks, you generally don't do laundry. One uniform is usually good for about two weeks before it gets too rank to wear, assuming you change your undies (if used), t-shirt, and socks every day.
When you're deployed at a more permanent facility, the Army will generally contract out some locals to do laundry. In Bosnia we had several Bosnian women who worked on my base camp, and they washed and dried your clothes at no cost to the soldier. They were paid by the Army. You could tip them some and they'd iron your uniforms for you if you desired.
In more austere deployment environments, there's the LADS - Laundry Advanced System, which uses 400 gallons of water/day compared to the old M85 laundry unit which would use 8,000 gallons per day. Oh, and the LADS has four times the capacity of the M85. There's actually soldiers whose specific job in the Army is to run the laundry. It's the 92S, Shower / Laundry and Clothing Repair Specialist.
Whew.
We’re not 20 years old any longer. LOL
Every floor in the barracks has a laundry room.
It could be kinda scratchy, but not all that bad. The sleeves were the worst and you'd get creases in them, as elsewhere, pretty quick.
For many years after I always wore my dress shirts with extra starch. Old habits die hard, I guess. But now I'm glad to be beyond that (not only the starch but the dress shirts...).
Not sure for other branches, but when I was in the AF from 1987-94 we did our own, even on deployment (if facilities were available).
Amen,brother.
The old mimeograph machine.
General Joseph Hooker had camp followers who took care of various things.
Amen,brother.
____________________
We were pretty tough then.
This was true of most of the armies during the Civil War. And as the Northern armies pushed into the Confederacy, more and more of those camp followers became Blacks.
But Frank referred to the post Civil War military (1869) and there weren't many camp followers out West.
when I was in IRAQ, on of the duties was laundry detail. We would employ the local iraqi women do it, and the base commander would pay them with Iraqi dinars. We would pick them up at the gate and take them back to a building that was full of washers and dryers. The duty entailed you watching/guarding them while they did your laundry. At the end of the day you took them back to the gate they went home and the next day we would start the process all over again.....
Some of us also used the washers...then let them hang to dry. 130 in the shade they dry rather fast!
You’re right. I was just adding a little trivia.
Actually, I'm curious about military laundry throughout the history of warfare.
I just never thought about it, until yesterday.
What I'm thinking about are those black-and-white photographs of American soldiers parading into the Rhineland in 1918, or through the streets of Paris in 1944. They all look so clean, so well-dressed, so spiffed, reeking of eau de cologne, clean-shaven, all tided up.
But just some days or hours before, they were all muddy and bedraggled and their attire ripped and torn.
This is why I, a professional civilian, assumed there was some sort of haberdashery-on-wheels, which followed the front lines, exchanging dirty uniforms for clean ones, and then sending the dirty ones way back from the front lines to be cleaned, and then distributed again.
Remember, for a professional civilian, it's the ordinary everyday things in military life that seem the most interesting.
Carrington, who's wife died sometime after, later married the widow of one of his officers who died during the Bozeman expedition.
*The Hayfield fight occurred at Ft C F Smith; not at Fort Phil Kearney as did the other two, although still under the same overall command...
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