Malodorous Canvas supported life in bivouac on the Alaska Highway in 1942. Tents provided barracks, mess halls and offices. Men slept on folding canvas cots. Canvas “lister bags” stored treated drinking water. Canvas enclosures became mechanical repair shops. In malodorous canvas enclosures, soldiers transformed empty fuel drums into stoves, showers and bath tubs.
A company bivouac featured a headquarters tent– for the commander, his first sergeant and clerk–along with a mess hall and kitchen tent and numerous five man sleeping tents for the men.
Bivouacs moved frequently, following the work, so tents, usually tied to trees, scattered informally. Army field manual descriptions rarely applied—except in the case of latrines. Troops located and prepared these critical facilities–twelve feet long, eighteen inches wide and six feet deep—with care.
Regimental headquarters and the H&S Company travelled with generators. Company bivouacs made do with lanterns. The orderly room might have one. The mess tent, larger, might have five. The supply tent would have one. And officer’s tents would have one apiece. Enlisted men undressed, slept, and dressed in the dark.
A typical kitchen tent came equipped with four white gas ranges and a fifty-five-gallon galvanized “dishwasher”. A large open tub, the dishwasher used a submersible heater which, given enough time, heated the water so men could come by and clean their mess kits. Joseph Prejean who worked in one of those kitchens remembered having to start the white gas burner by throwing gas on it.
The Corps of Engineers did not have to answer to OSHA.