by Jon E. Lewis
One advantage of the lean-to made from local materials is that it blends in with its surroundings, and so is far more difficult to detect than one made from a poncho.
Shelter can mean more than just a roof over your head. In swampy or marshy country, for instance, it will be just as important to build a sleeping platform that is well off the ground, so that you can stay dry. Remember that a bed like this will have to bear all your weight. There’s no point in trying to make one unless you have really substantial poles available.
Instead of building a platform, you can make a simple hammock out of a poncho, groundsheet or parachute canopy. Trees make better supports than poles that you have to drive into the ground.
Natural shelters
Often, you’ll find it easier and more rewarding to spend time looking for a natural shelter rather than in building one of your own. Look for caves, crevices, rocks on the side of hills away from the wind, fallen trees and large trees with low-hanging branches.
There are some places best avoided. Stay away from low ground if you can: these areas get cold and damp at night. Thick undergrowth is often infested with insects; check for snakes, scorpions, spiders and other pests. And wherever you settle, make sure there’s nothing loose about that could fall on you in a storm.
No matter where you find yourself, remember that the effect on your morale of having a place to “come home to”, even if it’s only a lean-to made out of brush wood, could mean the difference between life and death. Your will to live is what will really keep you alive, and anything that strengthens it is in your favour.
MAKING FIRE
Fire can be your best friend. It keeps you warm and dries your clothes; it cooks your food and purifies your water. But it can be your worst enemy, too. In enemy-held territory it can give away your position quicker than anything else. And a major burn is a dreadful wound, causing massive fluid loss and leaving you open to infection.
FUEL, HEAT AND OXYGEN
You have to bring three things together to make fire – fuel, heat and oxygen. Take away any one of these, and the fire goes out. About a fifth of all the air around us is oxygen. All you have to do is make sure that there is free passage of air around – and especially up through – the fire.
Heat – the heat to start the fire – you have to provide. Friction in one form or another is the usual way, but you can use the rays of the sun, and perhaps even electricity, in its place.
DIFFERENT FORMS OF FUEL
You have to provide fuel in three quite different forms – tinder, to catch the spark; kindling, to set the flame; and the fuel itself, to keep the fire going.
Most fuel will not burn when it’s wet. The water surrounds it and cuts off the air supply. Non-porous fuels like coal will burn when they are wet, however, and liquid fuels like oil, kerosene and petrol are completely unaffected by water.
But in most parts of the world it’s wood and vegetable matter that you’ll be burning, and this you must keep dry. Gathering and storing fuel for the fire is a very good example of how forward thinking pays dividends. But there is always something you can do to make a fire, even if you’re shivering to death in a freezing rainstorm and the matches are soaked through.
Look for:
1 A sheltered place to build a fire
2 Old, dead wood
3 Kindling
4 Tinder
Take these tasks one at a time. Look for a rock overhang on the lee side of a hill or outcrop; or a low fallen branch, or a fallen tree. At this stage you’re looking for protection for the fire, not shelter for yourself.
Gathering fuel
Dead wood, as long as it’s not actually lying in water, will usually have some dry material in it somewhere, but the best sources are dead timber that’s still standing, and dead branches that are still attached to the tree. Look for the bark peeling off.
The main difference between kindling and proper fuel is its size. Remember, the kindling takes up the sparks and glowing embers from the tinder and turns it into flames that will ignite the fuel.
Small, bone-dry twigs are the best, but if necessary you can make “fire-sticks” by shaving larger pieces of shallow cuts to feather them. This is a job much better done in advance.
Tinder must be dry. Absolutely, perfectly dry. You should have some already, packed up securely in a water-tight box next to your skin. If not, you’ll have to find some.
Don’t look too far to start with: you won’t need very much. Try the lining of your pockets and the seams of your clothes. The lint that collects there makes good tinder, except for wool. Dry bark, shredded into tiny pieces; dread grass, fern and moss; dead pine needles; downy seedheads from thistles and smaller plants: all these make good tinder, as long as the material is dry.
The common factor is the size of the individual pieces or fibres. They must be tiny, so that as much of their substance as possible is exposed to the air and to the spark or flame.
The vital spark
If you don’t have matches or a lighter that works, there are several alternative ways to start a fire. If you have direct sunlight and a magnifying lens, you can use the glass to focus the sun rays on to the tinder and start it burning that way. But this won’t work at night in a rainstorm!
Alternatively, you could use the “flint and steel” method.
If you have a so-called “metal match” (a metal strip with tiny flint chips embedded in it), then use that, scraping your knife blade along it to produce a shower of sparks.
Or look for a piece of flint or other very hard stone. Then you can use your knife to strike sparks off it; use the back of the blade. If you have a piece of hacksaw blade, you should use that to save damaging your knife.
Alternative technology
There are two other ways of making fire. The bow and drill and the fire saw both rely on friction between two pieces of wood. You have to make a small part of one of those pieces hot enough to set the tinder going. It is possible–but you’ll only need to try it once to become fanatical about carrying matches with you everywhere you go!
Fire Bow
Making a fire from the friction of wood upon wood really is a last-ditch alternative. The few aboriginal tribes that still make fire this way spend a very long time selecting exactly the right materials. Nevertheless, in the desert, where it’s perfectly dry, it is possible to start a fire in this way.
You’ll need:
1 A piece of green hardwood, about a metre (3 ft) long and 2½ cm (1 in) in diameter.
2 A piece of dry hardwood, 30 cm long and 1 cm in diameter.
3 A 5 cm hardwood cube, or a shell or a suitable stone.
4 A piece of dry softwood, 2½ cm thick.
5 A cord for the bow-string.
To make the fire bow:
1 Make the bow loosely using the cord and the long piece of hardwood.
2 Round off one end of the short piece of hardwood, and taper the other slightly.
3 Carve out the centre of the hardwood cube to fit the taper, or find a stone or shell of the right shape.
4 Make a depression in the softwood, close to one edge, and make a groove from it that leads to the edge.
5 Put some tinder next to the end of the groove.
6 Loop the bow-string round the drill, maintain pressure on the top with the cap, and work the bow backwards and forwards to create friction between the hardwood drill and the softwood baseboard. Wood dust will build up in the groove, and the end of the drill will become red-hot and ignite it.
Fire Saw
You’ll need:
1 A piece of bamboo, 5–8 cm in diameter and 1/2 metre long.
2 A forked stick, to anchor it into the ground.
To make the fire saw:
1 Split the bamboo length ways.
2 Cut two notches in a straight line across the two exposed edges near to one end.
3 Brace the notched bamboo with the forked stick.
4 Fill the space between the notches with a handful of tind
er.
5 Saw in the notches until the tinder ignites.
Fire Tongs
1 Make a thong (a strip or string of tough material) using rattan (a sort of tropical vine), leather or very tough cord.
2 Split a dry stick and hold the split open with a small wedge.
3 Run the thong through the split.
4 Place a small wad of tinder in the split.
5 Secure the stick with your foot and run the thong back and forth to create frictional heat. The tinder will eventually ignite.
Vehicle fuel
If you have a vehicle you have another option – use the battery. Rip out some wire and attach a piece to each terminal. Touch the bare ends together and you’ll get a spark.
If the vehicle is petrol (gasoline) driven, you can use a tiny amount of the fuel to help the process along, but remember that petrol in its liquid form doesn’t burn. You can only set fire to it as a vapour. So, use less than a teaspoonful, soak some rag and make it spark in the air just above the surface. Diesel fuel doesn’t work in this way – you need a good size flame to set it alight at all.
Hints for the Firemaker
When you’re making a fire under difficult conditions, you must start small and add to it very carefully. If you’ve been unable to find a site sheltered from the wind, then you must make a windbreak, although it may be simpler to dig a sloping trench and light the fire inside that.
If the ground is very wet, use stones as a base, but make sure that they’re not porous. Wet, porous stones can explode: that will not only injure you, but also blow the fire all over the place.
Don’t worry about making an elaborate fireplace at this stage. Get the fire alight first.
Laying a fire
THE LOG CABIN PILE
This is a very good way of laying a fire. Plenty of air can circulate and it will not collapse until it’s well away.
Make a nest of dry grass and the smallest twigs. If you can find a dry bird’s or mouse’s nest, so much the better. It will have down and fur mixed in with the grass, and probably some dry droppings too – all of them excellent tinder.
Put your tinder inside. Arrange dry kindling over it in the shape of a cone, or make a lean-to by pushing a green stick into the ground at an angle of about 30 degrees and build up the kindling along it to make a sort of tent.
Make sure that you’ve got all the materials you need to hand before attempting to light the fire – you may only get one chance, and at the beginning you’ll have to work quickly, adding small amounts of kindling as the fire grows.
Keep the fire going
If you have a choice of different types of wood to use as fuel, use softwood – pine and spruce, for example – as the first load of fuel, but be careful of sparks. These woods contain resin and burn quickly. To keep the fire going, use hardwood such as oak or beech. They’re much longer lasting.
You can use a mixture of green and dry wood to keep the fire going through the night, but don’t just dump wood on it without thinking. Make sure that you keep a good stock of fuel close at hand, and arrange it so that the heat from the fire will help to dry the fuel out. Keep kindling at hand, too, so that you can revive the fire quickly if it looks like dying out.
Improving the fire
How you improve the fire site depends on what you’re going to use it for. A fire that you use for smoking food, for instance, isn’t much use for anything else. Its purpose is to produce lots of smoke inside an enclosure. You won’t be able to cook on it, and it won’t give out much warmth.
The hobo stove
You can cook on an open fire, but it’s not very efficient: it’s better to construct a stove of some sort. The simplest stove needs something like a five-gallon oil drum. Punch poles in one end and in a ring all around the side at the same end. Cut out a panel about two inches above that ring of holes. Punch a large hole in one side of the drum near the other end, to let the smoke out. Place the stove on a ring of stones to allow the air to circulate from underneath.
Now you can transfer some of your fire into the stove, stoke it through the cut-out panel and cook on top. It’ll give off enough heat to keep you warm, too, and has the very positive benefit of not showing sparks and flames like an open fire does.
The fire pit
You can achieve much the same effect by digging a circular pit, and then another smaller one, slantwise, that meets it at the bottom. The slanting hole is for the air to circulate up through the fire, so dig it on the side of the prevailing wind.
A fire pit
If you dig it close to the trunk of a tree, the smoke will go up into the foliage and be dispersed, helping to disguise your position.
Reflectors and windbreaks
You can make a fire more effective as a source of warmth of building a firewall across one or two sides, to reflect the heat back towards you.
The simplest way is to drive four green-wood stakes into the ground in two pairs, three or four inches apart, with three or four feet between them. Fill up the space with trimmed branches and trunks, but don’t bind them together. That way you get a firewall and a stack of dry wood all in one!
Poor conditions
You may have to build your fire in the wet – on snow, or in a swamp, for example. In the snow it’s easiest to build a base out of layers of green wood. In swamp or marshland, raise that platform up on four legs.
Don’t bother to chop or even break up long pieces of wood for an open fire. Start at one end and feed the log in as it burns, or lay it cross the fire and wait until it burns through, then turn the ends in.
Having gone through all the pain of getting your fire going, don’t let it go out! Use well-dried hardwood during the day; it produces very little smoke. As the evening approaches, you may want to add green or damp fuel to produce smoke that will drive away insects.
A SIMPLE CRANE
Use a green-wood pole with a forked notch to hold a container over a fire. Beware of large, naked flames: a burning pole will wreck your meal.
Alternative fuels
If you have a vehicle, almost every part of it that isn’t metal will burn. Mix oil, petrol or diesel with sand in a pit and set fire to it. Rip out the upholstery and the trim and use for fuel.
The tyres will burn if you get them hot enough, but stay upwind of the smoke! Hydraulic fluid from the brake and clutch systems is highly flammable, and so is neat anti-freeze. All of this applies to aircraft as much as ground vehicles.
Animal droppings, if they are perfectly dry, are a very good source of fuel: easy to light, slow-burning and almost smokeless.
After a while, looking after your fire will become second nature to you. You’ll sense changes in its mood, and be able to change its character to do different jobs.
WATER
Water is a basic human need. There is no adequate substitute, and without it you cannot live more than a few days. Within the human body water acts as a stabilizer; it helps to maintain warmth in cold environments, and is vital for staying cool in hot environments. It is also part of the body’s mechanism for distributing food and removing waste. As soon as you are cut off from a source of fresh water, you begin to dehydrate.
The rate at which you dehydrate depends on a number of factors: the amount of water your body already contains, the clothing you are wearing, the local temperature, how hard you are working, whether you are in shade, or sunlight, whether you are smoking and whether you are calm or nervous.
You will collapse after losing 12 per cent of your body weight; the diagram shows the progressive symptoms. Heat exhaustion is still a killer on exercises in the UK as well as abroad. You must be able to recognize the signs in your mates; it doesn’t have to be a hot day to kill them. If all the danger signs are ignored, sweating will eventually stop and the victim will collapse.
If you allow dehydration to continue, there will come a point when you can no longer search for water. Your first priority is to minimize further dehydration and, having done this, you m
ust find water. (If you are stranded in a desert with little chance of finding water, stay still to prevent further dehydration, and make efforts to signal for rescue.)
POINTS FOR SURVIVAL
1 Avoid eating until you have secured a source of safe water.
2 Do not ration your water; drink as much as you can when you can.
3 Urine is a good indicator of dehydration. The darker its colour, the more dehydrated you are.
4 Bacteria multiples faster in warm water, so water gathered early in the morning, at its coolest, is safer.
5 To reduce dehydration:
• Find shade
• Move slowly and do not smoke
• Cover exposed skin to prevent evaporation of sweat
• Suck a pebble (helps prevent exhalation of moisture through the mouth)
FINDING WATER
You do not have to be in a desert to have difficulty finding water. Forests often offer such poor visibility that, although surrounded by water-loving trees, you cannot spot readily available surface water. (In combat conditions, however, you may have to deliberately avoid obvious sources of water, for fear of ambush.)
So how do you go about finding water? The first thing you do is to remember the following points:
1 Water runs downhill, so make for lower country.
2 Where there is water, there is usually an abundance of lush vegetation. If possible, learn to recognize the moisture-loving plants in the area. If this vegetation is wilted or dead, it probably indicates chemical pollution.
