Dave Seim is watching the landing while doing KP. Behind him are two trash cans equipped with emersion heaters to provide warm water to clean up kitchen equipment and our individual mess kits. They felt greasy from the first time I touched them while on KP and the grease got thicker as time passed. Sometime in early 1969 most men in our unit contracted a disease that resulted in rapid weight loss from diarrhea. It took several days to figure out that the source of the problem was the cans.  After that we got new ones and started using paper plates and plastic utensils.

One got about two seconds notice from the bowels before they emptied a watery load and many clothes were soiled in running to the crapper. Ours was a large door with three holes cut into it and the lower 1/3 of 55-gallon metal drums under each hole to catch and hold the harvest. There were no walls and no privacy. Each day the containers were pulled out, diesel fuel and gas added in proper proportions (I forget the ratio), then ignited to burn off the contents and it took hours. Very few solids were in a container. This was not popular duty.

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