Chapter 12
Observation of the rules of personal hygiene was one of the most necessary conditions for maintaining a unit‘s battleworthiness. During the Great Patriotic War; the centre directing the hygiene safety of troops was created in the Main Military Sanitary Department of the Red Army. But many of its instructions existed only on paper – people couldn't care less about hygiene in real combat situations where the question of life or death was resolved on a daily basis. Only when soldiers were pulled out of action could they put themselves in order A tanker; Nikolay Shishkin, remembers:
Sometimes we wouldn't bathe for a whole month. And sometimes we would bathe every tenth day, as was appropriate. A bathhouse would be made the following way: a log cabin covered with twigs was set up in the forest. The floor was also covered with twigs. Several crewmen would go together – one guy stokes the fireplace, another chops firewood, another brings water You come in for washing, they give you water straight away, you get soaped, they would beat you with a bundle of sticks, rub you with a bast wisp [to improve the circulation – trans.], pour water over you – sometimes icy water intentionally. Once you're washed, back to duty, other guys come over Wonderful!
At the start of the war, almost all soldiers had lice. But by the middle of the war lice had ceased to be permanent travelmates for soldiers. Rostislav Zhidkov, a ‘Katyusha’ battery commander, recalls:
In winter, Red Army soldiers often had to use snow for washing.
Morning shaving of artillerymen. The commander in blue jodhpurs shaves one of his subordinates. In the foreground is a stack of rifles. In the background can be seen the camouflaged barrel of an F-22 USV gun.
An officer shaving with the aid of a compass mirror.
Soldiers wash in a small river after a long and exhausting march.
The lice were there during the first two years. I remember we used to play the ‘louse game’ with our daily vodka ration at stake. We took a plywood sheet with a circle drawn in the middle, the size of a 5-kopeck coin. We would pull out a louse, place it in the centre of the circle and the winner was the guy whose louse was the first to reach the edge. Here it is, just before the winning line [...] just about to walk over, but then it suddenly freezes and another louse overtakes! The loser would be squashed straight away! But the winner was marked with a chemical pencil and hidden inside a matchstick box – it was to be a race-louse now! During the latter part of the war, if a louse was found in a bathhouse the whole unit would be made to wash again. At the same time we began using soap ‘K’ for disinfection. The Germans used some stinky powder against lice but still got infected with them! During advances we tried to avoid sheltering in German dugouts – otherwise we'd have to get rid of lice again.
It is noteworthy that Rostislav Zhidkov served in a Guards Mortar Unit – the elite of the Red Army. The situation was often quite different in ordinary rifle units. An artillery technician, Sergey Soloviev, remembers a washday back in 1943:
We were sent to the rear in two 1/2-ton trucks. While we remained in a line of vehicles, our sergeant ran up and whispered in my ear: ‘Technician, the bathhouse around the corner has been heated but there are girls in it – hope they won't kick us out.’ We got ready for a sudden ‘assault’: unwrapped our puttees, undid buttons wherever we could, and burst into the banya dugout, having thrown down our trench coats. Our Slavic girls began to scream, screening themselves off with washbasins somehow: ‘You cheeky bastards, get out!’ But having looked over our bony bodies and got an idea of our condition – in which we didn't even want to view them – they gave us a washbasin with hot water I remember that, as I chucked my blue singlet into the hot water, it turned red straight away because of the boiled lice. Having rinsed myself somehow and thanked the kind girls, we got back to our trucks to load them just in time.
During the war, pilots had more comfortable conditions than all other arms of the service. These pilots enjoy the work of a barber girl at the airfield. Of course, they were used to the deafening sound of the LAGG-3 preparing to land.
The anti-lice campaigns were run for whole units as well as individuals via the steaming of clothes. To do this, a 200-litre barrel containing water was put over a fire. Clothes were hung on crossbeams set in the barrel, which would be closed by a lid. Half an hour later, hot wet cloth would be pulled out. Another method of killing lice was to wash underwear in petrol or gas oil – a sure way to irritate the skin if the garments were not permitted to dry fully before wearing.
Shaving was performed with cut-throat razors. Often, when no mirror was available, people shaved each other Men were only allowed to grow beards or moustaches in exceptional circumstances. As for tooth-brushing or hand-washing before eating, it may be said that these procedures were practically unknown to soldiers. Although a soldier was eligible for 150 grams of soap a month, it didn't reach the front line too often. Tooth powder wasn't available at all. It might be bought in special shops for military servicemen but the latter were rarely seen near the combat zone. The concept of toilet paper didn't exist back then. While servicemen of the rear line or Air Force units were not short of paper – present in the form of newspapers and leaflets – the front-line soldiers didn't even have this stuff ...
After an improvised wash, a Red Army soldier sews a new undercollar to his blouse.
A front-line barber's shop. More likely it was stationed near a laundry battalion or headquarters. The girls will cut the soldiers' hair close to the scalp for reasons of hygiene.
During lulls in the fighting, Red Army soldiers washed without fail. This improvised bathhouse is organized in a dugout. Clean soldiers in new underwear savour a little simple happiness.
It was almost an unrealizable dream for most Red Army soldiers to take a shower. This soldier is very lucky!
These soldiers were very lucky – they could wash in a real village bathhouse.
A unit marches to the bathhouse to the strains of an accordion. The soldiers carry clean underwear and bundles of birch twigs (used to improve circulation).