Us Official Photographs

GIs in England

After many nights of bitter freezing cold, G.I.'s in England have given up heaping the stoves in their Nissen huts before they went to sleep, with the fervent prayer that they would burn through the night and they have become firmly convinced that the stove in a Nissen hut cannot be made to burn for twelve hours. Sgt. Guy W. Allen, 702 SW 4th St., Perryton, Texas decided that if the stove in his hut would not burn for twelve hours, he would make one that would. He took some scrap metal from crashed planes, an empty 50 gallon oil drum with 1/3 of it cut off, cut a sheet of armor plate into three inch strips, laid them across some alloy piping from a plane, welded the whole thing together, hinged a door to the front, filled it with coke and then sat back to await the results. He was amazed to find that not only did his invention burn all night, but that there were no ashes to remove in the morning. The fire burned down to a fine ash with no clinkers and the hut-mates of Allen have been rewarded with a warm hut with no one having to get up and fix the fire in the middle of the night. The stove burns coke and these G.I.'s have been warm while they are conserving coal.