'Stretcher-bearers': (28) Living in a 'bivvy'

Living in a 'bivvy'

(Written during 6 days leave, following first withdrawal from Cassino, after hearing on the radio that Parliament was concerned with the problem of post-war housing.)

The 2-man bivouac, or bivvy, is the lowest form of housing used by man. A dog kennel is more robust and designed for single occupancy.. Admittedly, both bivvy and kennel must house four legs, but a dog can stride in manfully, while the human pair have to crawl in dogwise.
This bivvy is a strip of canvas tent, about seven feet long, somewhat less in breadth. It comes complete with two poles and sundry pegs. Cords at each end and at the sides theoretically fasten over iron pegs, but since the whole tent has to be frequently uprooted, sometimes more than once a day, pegs and cords tend to go astray.
The bivvy is the true democrat in canvas, designed exclusively for other ranks, although I have once seen it promoted as top cover for an officer's latrine.
Having crept in gingerly, avoiding contact with any part of the canvas which will cause it to leak, you find enough lebensraum inside to assume any of three positions: prone, supine or semi-recumbent. It is out of the question to attempt to sit upright unless the whole floor of the bivvy has been excavated beforehand.
A wise choice of "bivvy mate" is top priority. Who indeed can share with the corpulent, the long-legged, the snorer, or one whose thumping heart-beats can be sensed above your own when the going gets tough?
He must have a penchant for digging, for entrenching its surrounds and for scooping out its base. Experienced veterans dig down deep.
Shun the applicant who claims divine protection. We all share an instinctive hope of survival, but the oaf who proclaims, "They'll never get me, mate," is tempting providence and might have been shot long ago by anyone of us, had we been armed.
Don't expect a tanned Adonis as your fellow lodger in this land of "sunny Italy". Torrential rain is the order of the day this spring. Your bivvy may stand up to about half an hour of steady downpour. After that abandon ship and run for the shelled cowshed.
The unfortunate pair who pitched their bivvy beside a foaming brook eventually discovered a single waterlogged army boot yards downstream.
Your bivvy comrade should be a philosopher, prepared to remark, "It might be worse.". Of course his statement is worthless, but not nearly so bad as strings of oaths which veer, all to often, from the distraught bivvy companion to you, his mate.
The ideal kindred soul must be tidy, with a flair for finding your mess tin buried in his blanket. He must be a vino TT, keep reasonable hours and remember to fill from the distant water cart last thing at night, and procure, by any means, a candle or improvised paraffin lamp. Above all, he must be possessed of patience infinite.
Such a man is Leslie Lingard, who quietly hums to himself a little tune as he rises at 5.30 a.m. reveille on a rain-swept hillock. For him there is none of the sulking that Achilles practised in his tent aeons ago. Biuvouacs are too small for such petulance.
Given fine weather, both Lingard and I might well have followed the advice of poet Stevenson,
"Bed in the bush with stars to see,"
were it not that the hedgerows hereabouts are stocked with cactus and prickly pear.
No. The government may have an easier task than it anticipates . Most of us crave simple pleasures, just a dry-roofed abode where we may live in settled, low content.
Failing the ever resourceful, uncomplaining Lingard, I would choose Stratford Will to while away our inclement Italian weather.
"With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day."

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