Army M*A*S*H laundry question.

[rpms]

I was watching M*A*S*H tonight and it was the episode where Charles had to wash sheets on a washboard. Would a M*A*S*H unit have a washer?. They had a piano in the officer's club, so a washer couldn't have been much harder to move. How would they have washed sheets and uniforms and dried them in cold, wet weather? Was that stuff disposed of and flown in?
Did anyone else think Hawkeye was a bit light in the loafers?
I always thought so. When BJ had the yarn around his hands and Hawkeye was rolling it into a ball?

 

[spiceman1957]

MASH Units

were mobile, so they had to be ready to move out in a moment notice. I would have thought they had wringer washers at least. As far as staff's laundry goes, they may have hired local people to do that, like in Vietnam. As far as Hawkeye's mental status, I think he used humor and antics to hide his true emotions on doing surgery on such young boys and his disgust in being caught up in a war that was not necessary. If you remember the final episode, Hawkeye has a mental breakdown when he sees a local Korean woman suffocating and killing her own baby so that a bus loaded with army medical personnel and injured solders would avoided being caught by the North Koreans. I think one could say that BJ and Hawkeye were good for each other in helping each other avoiding cracking up. And to think, even as we speak, this war (or police action as they called it) still has not been resolved and North Korean could still obliterate South Korean and even us at any moment.
John

 

[cfz2882]

laundry in ww2

would be interesting to find what washers the army was using
in ww2(if any)-i have seen ww2 pics of uniforms being washed
in 55gal drums heated over a fire and in streams and rivers.
In a pic of the laundry room of a ww2 submarine,there was a
nice GE wringer washer...

 

[qsd-dan]

Did anyone else think Hawkeye was a bit light in the loafers

With all of the nurses that he was constantly chasing?

 

[goatfarmer]

It was a decent show, but it "jumped the shark", so to speak, when Trapper left, and BJ showed up.

 

[tomturbomatic]

It was a hospital unit. Hospitals produce lots of dirty laundry that needs to be well laundered especially stuff for the operating rooms, some of which would have to also be autoclaved. This did not require automatic washers; indeed most commercial equipment was not what would be considered automatic. There were manually controlled tumbler washers and spinners and dryers, maybe with timers, maybe not. Remember the laundry equipment on the beach in South Pacific? The MASH had lot of heavy equipment for the kitchen and the hospital. They had boilers and generators, X-ray equipment and refrigeration equipment for both food and medical supplies. A few pieces for the laundry would be expected and could be easily handled in the logistics of moving when it became necessary. It was mobile in that it COULD be moved, but was not regularly moved. We were only shown a narrow slice of the operation on the show, mostly the medical staff, not the engineers that kept the place running. The personal laundry of the staff might be contracted out to the local population.