Title: War Surgery and Medicine

Author: Stout, T. Duncan M.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1954, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

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Camp Sanitation

Camps were of two varieties: those where units settled for periods of one to ten months and those used for shorter staging periods. In the more permanent camps standard types of cookhouses were built with the usual stoves, grease traps, and rubbish disposal bins. Much local ingenuity was evident both in constructing patent stoves and ovens, grease traps, and collapsible safes suitable for moving from place to place. Rubbish cans—usually half 44-gallon drums with lids—were standard. For cleaning dishes other 44-gallon drums—cut into half along their length—were filled with water and boiled over a fire. Usually a tent or hut, with tables and forms devised of local wood, was used for a mess hall. In some cases metal airfield construction strips were used for this purpose.

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In staging areas the cookhouses were of a more temporary type—cooking was usually done on the standard army cookers, and rubbish and waste disposed of by simple burial.