THE NISSEN HUT.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 270, 27 April 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE NISSEN HUT.

TOMMY'S NEW HOME AT THE ntONT.

By FILSON YOUNG, in the "Daily Mail/'

With the British Army in the Field, Saturady. At about the same time as the tanki mado their memorable debut on th< battlefield, anotner creature, almos equally primeval of aspect, began t< appear in tho conquered areas.

No ono ever saw it on the move ch met it on the roads; it just appeared. Overnight you would see a blank spact

of ground; in the morning it would be occupied by an immense creature of the tortoise species, settled down solidly and permanently on' thto cjjrth, and emitting green smoke from a rightangled stem at one end, where its mouth might be, as though it were smoking a pipe. And when such a pioneer found that tho situation was good and the land was habitable it would apparently pass the word; for by twos and threes, by tens and hundreds, its fellow-monstere would appear, so that in a week or two you would find a valley covered with them that had been nothing but pulverised earth before.

The name of this creature is the Nissen hut. It is the solution of one of tho many problems that every war presents. Tlie problem hero was to devise a cheap, portable dwelling-place wherein men could live warm and dry; cheap enough to be purchased by tens of thousands; portable enough to carried on any road; cheap enough to houso two dozen men; simple enough to bo erected by anybody and on any ground; and weatherproof enough to gno adequate protection from summer heat nad wintr cold.

All these conditions are fulfilld by the Nissen hut, the invention of a Canadian Engineer officer who sat down and thought it out 011 an idle day in May, 1916. He did his preliminary thinking so well that the third hut he built is of the pattern now being used, of which there are at least 20,000 in the country to-day and which are tiie homes of some half-million of British Tommies.

NO WALLS.

One peculiarity of the Nissen hut is that it has no walls. It consists of a roof, ends, and a floor. The roof is simply an arch of corrugated iron, so there are no eaves or gables to fit. Thus the greatest amount of standing space is enclosed with the least amount of material. \ou can order a Nissen hut as you would order a garden chair, and it will arrive neatly packed, with instructions how it is to be put up. Anyono can put it up, but four men can do it easily in four hours. Th© only tool required—a spanner—is supplied witn it. The whole can be packed on an Army wagon, and its weight is two tons; but no single part'or package is heavier than can be unloaded by two men. -

All the parts are interchangeable. 'lho whole thmg rests on three longitudinal sills 2/ feet long. On these you lay the panels of floor-boarding. There aro twelve of them; you can put them down in any order you like—they are all tho same. The roof is in 48 pieces—all tho same. You arrange them in threo 9-foot sheets, with a 6-inch overlap. You go on fitting them together anyhow, in any order, and when they are all used you find that the roof is complete.

The I'ning, of half-inch matchboard, is fastened to rihs of T-iron that follow the semicircuiai; shape of the roof. There aro five ribs made of three segments each. These segments are nested in bundles of five; you use them in any order you like—thejr are all the same. There are no nails to drive. A single pattern of hook-bolt is used for every fastening. The lining is tongued and grooved, and however green the wood is or however much it may shrink owing to the heat in the hut there are no draughts. \ou simply keep knocking it down tight to tho sides of the hut (where the men's heads are when they sleep), and the shrinkage is represented by an open 6pace along the middle of the roof which gives ventilation into the air space between roof and ceiling, which is so valuable a feature of the hut. It keeps the heat in in winter and out in summer.

KINDLY DOMESTIC BEAST.

These are the new homes for which many a soldier on the Somme front is thanking his stars in the bitter weather. Twenty-four men sleep warm and dry on their beds on the floor. By day the beds are rolled up against the sides and the whole middle space (which as a mess would seat 52 men) is available for work, games, messing, writing, or reading. The hut is warmed by the ordinary Canadian stove —an iron drum with two holes in it and a smoked-pipe —which is the only portable furnace that you can make red-hot on greeu wood fuel.

Thotro are things that the Nissen hut, Ike tho tank, wll not do. It wll not move; but that is onlv because the roads arc not broad enough. If they were you could mount it on four wheels and tow it. It will not keep out .shells; but, on the other hand, its round back lends itself to the most artistic camouflage (screening). In short, among the creatures to which the war has given birth it lias already earned a high character as a useful, tractable, kindly domestic beast. Some officers in h'gh commands think so highly of it as to mako collections of it; so that there is hardily a chateau which houses an army or corps headquarters but has two or threo perfectly tame, crouching within sight of its front door :;nd acting with equal docility as telephone exchanges, map-rooms, stables, or offices.

And so mo day, when pcopl© in this stricken zone begin to try to pick up tho threads of life again, and find the very towns whore they lived wiped off tho f;;ce of the earth, the Xissen hut will tako a place 111 the French heart that it is lieginmng to take in the French landscape.