Key to victory? Clean hands

SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN -- For U.S. Marines in the Afghan desert, one of the secrets of waging war is a lesson most learned from their mothers: Wash your hands.

The failure of the Soviets to follow that basic rule of hygiene helps explain why they lost their war in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. military report. The report says that of 620,000 Soviets who served in Afghanistan, an astounding 75.76 percent were hospitalized, most of them -- 88.56 percent -- not from war wounds but from diseases often prevented by basic hygiene.

"No one ever washed their hands," Cmdr. Steven of Portland, Ore., a U.S. Navy flight surgeon, said Monday. Military rules ban publication of the last names of most troops based at this desert airfield.

Staying clean is a struggle with no running water and sand everywhere; a dust storm blew across the base Monday. Until Saturday, there were no latrines.

And yet eight days after Marines arrived in Afghanistan, "we have had zero hygiene-related illnesses," the surgeon said.

All over the camp and even out on the forward lines, troops routinely strip to the waist in the warm sun and clean themselves as best they can, with bottled water, soap and a towel.

"We all emphasize to the Marines: Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands," said Capt. Patricia, 26, a Marine Corps engineer from Sayre, Pa. Part of her job is to design and build sanitation facilities, including latrines. "Whenever we set them up, I work closely with medical," she said.

The 1995 report, "Medical Support in a Counter Guerrilla War: Lessons learned in the Soviet Afghan War," said Soviet troops suffered from poor personal hygiene, including cooks who spread disease by failing to wash their hands. There were no proper latrines, soldiers failed to wash themselves or change their clothes and had poor food and little clean water.

That resulted in the spread of hepatitis, cholera, typhoid and other illnesses that could have been prevented.

The United States beefed up its ground force Monday with new light armored vehicles and a platoon of hunter-killer teams that could be used to intercept Taliban tanks and troops fleeing Kandahar.

The arrival of new forces "significantly augmented" U.S. firepower, said Capt. David Romley, a Marine spokesman. The hunter-killer platoon includes teams of Humvee vehicles armed with antitank missiles, automatic grenade launchers and heavy machines guns.

On Sunday, the Marines nearly doubled the size of their combat helicopter fleet at the desert airstrip they seized late last month.

"We continue to build up our forces here," Romley said.

Three Marine Harrier jump jets dropped 500-pound bombs on targets in southern Afghanistan on Monday in an attack guided by U.S. or allied personnel working clandestinely on the ground. The Marines would not provide further information about the nature or location of the targets.

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