military laundry

conservativecave.com ^ | May 19, 2009 | franksolich

[wideminded]

For the dress blues, we could take them down to the ship’s dry cleaner and pick them up next day.

A close relative of mine who was in the Navy in WWII said that they starched their dress white uniforms by dipping them in salt water and laying them out on the deck.

[bcsco]

Actually, I'm curious about military laundry throughout the history of warfare.

I understand. I was merely replying to the comment regarding Civil War camp followers.

Here's another piece of trivia, though not related to military laundry. In the post Civil War cavalry, the enlisted men were allotted 15 rounds of ammunition per month for target practice. Think about that...

[AlaskaErik]

When I was in Okinawa we paid mama-san $5.00 a week to do our laundry and clean our rooms. In Afghanistan we put our laundry into a laundry bag, filled out an inventory form and turned it in to a central collection point. From there it was delivered to the base laundry to be cleaned by Afghan locals.

[unkus]

Thanks bcsco. I love trivia such as this.

[handy old one]

Please be polite to us seasoned citizens. I have see and used these ancient photocopies. I am Young enough to still work on CNC machines and other up to date Machines.

[Ax]

In our barracks at Clark Air Base in the Philippines in the early 60s, we had houseboys (even if they were in their mid-6os). For a couple of bucks a month, they did all of our laundry (less the 505s), shined our boots and cleaned the barracks. We had to take the 505 uniforms (khakis) to a base laundry where they used rice starch, and they really stank after a couple of hours of wear.

At a small NATO base in Southern Italy in my follow-on tour, we had a laundry room per floor of the barracks, and a base laundry.

[bcsco]

I love trivia such as this.

Off topic, though close, here's an article about a pretty interesting fella you may recall High Eagle The Many Lives of Colonel Tim McCoy. There's some pretty interesting trivia to be gleaned from this...

In light of this...

Or this...

[bcsco]

The Indian, White Man Runs Him, in the above photo, was one of 5 Crow scouts that served Custer at the Little Big Horn. The Crow’s Nest was the lookout point in the Wolf Mountains, from which Custer’s regiment discovered the Sioux encampment on the Little Big Horn.

[Eagle Eye]

Which got me to thinking--who does the military laundry?

In Iraq/Afghanstan it is KBR.

[Eagle Eye]

Since 2003, KBR has:

Served more than 937 million meals;
Issued more than 7 billion gallons of fuel;
Handled more than 335 million pounds of mail;
Washed more than 66 million bundles of laundry; and
Hosted more than 152 million visits to Morale, Welfare and Recreation facilities.

[Terabitten]

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.

Often, soldiers have cleaned up using whatever was available -- whatever water and /or soap they could find. In the cases of the parades you're talking about, a lot of times soldiers went to the front but left their duffel bags (packed full of clothes) at some central point in the rear. They might not see those duffels for months or years at a time. When the unit got rotated back to the rear, though, they'd be reunited with their bags which were full of clean clothes.

[Marie]

The soldiers are responsible for their own laundry. There are laundry rooms in the barracks. (Hubby is a 1st Sgt. He’s always complaining about the soldiers leaving the room a mess, leaving their laundry soap and cleaning supplies down there, and leaving their clothes unattended.)

There’s also a dry cleaning/mending business on every post called “The Pickup Point”. I used to work at one. We sent out the uniforms to a private contractor for dry cleaning. We did the uniform repairs, alterations and patch sewing ourselves. (Best job I ever had! Great manager.)

[2CAVTrooper]

“In Iraq KBR did it.”

Same thing in Bosnia.

[CIDKauf]

KBR- Love Mark Briggs, plumber KBR Afganistan...Thanks for flying the flag for my Dad! Memorials are great!

[Shimmer1]

A base of any size is just like a city, it has almost everything you would need. If it closed the gates, it could go on operating, except for running out of some things of course.

I didn’t read all the answers, I hope I haven’t repeated any other post.

[Penn_Cajun]

There was a post laundry at Camp Enari south of Pleiku when I was there 1969-1970. All the work was done by Vietnamese. Some battalion areas had mama-sans who did laundry.