Building a Camp Sink/Latrine

[PieBoy96]

Friends,

I'm looking for some period accounts or sketches of how a camp sink/latrine was built. A search on here yielded no relevant results, and I can't recall any detailed descriptions in some of the more well known books. I do seem to remember reading long ago that a structure was built somewhat resembling a saw horse to kinda lean back up against, but I can't find the account. Kind of drawing a blank here -- does anyone know of some resources on how to build one?

Thanks!

[Andy Ackeret]

Re: Building a Camp Sink/Latrine

Some of the period photographs of Andersonville show the sinks.

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/o...ages/fig44.jpg

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/o...ages/fig23.jpg

[CSchneider]

Re: Building a Camp Sink/Latrine

I'll try to attach a photo of it later, but for the time being, download the highest resolution version of this photo: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...56sf=03888:@@@. On the right side of the open area in the center of the photo there is a small latrine. There is a frame for some canvas to go over top of it, a small pile of brush in front, a hole with a pile of dirt behind it, two logs stuck on their ends into the hole, and a board placed across the tops of the two logs. Doesn't get much simpler than that. Then there's the giant brush hut monstrosity of a sink just next to it...

-Craig Schneider

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Building a Camp Sink/Latrine

Hallo!

I looked for it online, but could not find it. Somewhere in a book there is an image of "Andersonville" prison of the sinks in use.

There are the popular view of the sinks from the southeast and southwest in 1864, but they are not the one I was going for.

Granted, Andersonville is perhaps the "usual."



Without rumaging thrugh the manuals for camp layout info... here is asnippet from "The Encyclopdia of Civil War Medicine" but as with many books, it is presented as fact without documentation. So, I leave it at that:



Curt