Stoves, homemade stoves, in tents? Subarctic weather demanded that each tent have one.
Green Wood and Chester’s Solution
The heat, of course, thawed the dirt floor into slimy mud. Soldiers festooned their tents with strings, ropes and rigging from which hung clothing, rifles, photos–anything the soldier did not want on the ground. Less valuable gear they jammed under the cots. Boots got the most precious storage spot in the tent–tucked into sleeping bags to keep warm and flexible for the morning.
Initially the army supplied kerosene heaters, but a chronic shortage of kerosene inspired creativity. Most soldiers pulled out the kerosene heater and threw it away but kept the top half of the stove with its fittings for stovepipe. From an empty fifty-five-gallon fuel drum they fashioned a replacement for the bottom half and in the converted drum they burned wood.
A typical company on the project created a permanent three-man firewood detail, rotating the duty weekly between platoons. The detail wielded crosscut saws, axes and machetes to make stove wood out of the detritus of the road, stacking it next to or inside each tent. Incidentally, the firewood detail supplied other services to the bivouac—the soldiers felt free to air their stale bedding, knowing that, in the event of rain, the firewood detail would stuff it back into their tents.
To vent smoke from the stoves, the soldiers penetrated the canvas with stovepipe, installing a spark arrester on top of the ‘chimney’. Live coals, though, escaped the arrester all too easily, smoldering on flammable canvas and eventually igniting it. B Company of the 97th lost over half their tents in one spark fire.
The most important guard duty on the highway was the fire guard mounted at every bivouac.