One of the first things a British soldier learns is to keep himself clean. He can’t do it, and he’s as filthy as a pig all the time he is in the trenches, but he tries. He is always shaving, even under fire, and show him running water and he goes to it like a duck.
More than once I have shaved in a periscope mirror pegged into the side of a trench, with the bullets snapping overhead, and rubbed my face with wet tea leaves afterward to freshen up.
Back in billets the very first thing that comes off is the big cleanup. Uniforms are brushed up, and equipment put in order. Then comes the bath, the most thorough possible under the conditions. After that comes the “cootie carnival,” better known as the “shirt hunt.” The cootie is the soldier’s worst enemy. He’s worse than the Hun. You can’t get rid of him wherever you are, in the trenches or in billets, and he sticks closer than a brother. The cootie is a good deal of an acrobat. His policy of attack is to hang on to the shirt and to nibble at the occupant. Pull off the shirt and he comes with it. Hence the shirt hunt. Tommy gets out in the open somewhere so as not to shed his little companions indoors—there’s always enough there anyhow—and he peels. Then he systematically runs down each seam—the cootie’s favorite hiding place—catches the game, and ends his career by cracking him between the thumb nails.
For some obscure psychological reason, Tommy seems to like company on one of these hunts. Perhaps it is because misery loves company, or it may be that he likes to compare notes on the catch. Anyhow, it is a common thing to see from a dozen to twenty soldiers with their shirts off, hunting cooties.
“Hi sye, ’Arry,” you’ll hear someone sing out. “Look ’ere. Strike me bloomin’ well pink but this one ’ere’s got a black stripe along ’is back.”
Or, “If this don’t look like the one I showed ye ’fore we went into the blinkin’ line. ’Ow’d ’e git loose?”
And then, as likely as not, a little farther away, behind the officers’ quarters, you’ll hear one say:
“I say, old chap, it’s deucedly peculiar I should have so many of the beastly things after putting on the Harrisons mothaw sent in the lawst parcel.”
The cootie isn’t at all fastidious. He will bite the British aristocrat as soon as anybody else. He finds his way into all branches of the service, and I have even seen a dignified colonel wiggle his shoulders anxiously.
Some of the cootie stories have become classical, like this one which was told from the North Sea to the Swiss border. It might have happened at that.
A soldier was going over the top when one of his cootie friends bit him on the calf. The soldier reached down and captured the biter. Just as he stooped, a shell whizzed over where his head would have been if he had not gone after the cootie. Holding the captive between thumb and finger, he said:
“Old feller, I cawn’t give yer the Victoria Cross—but I can put yer back.”
And he did.
The worst thing about the cootie is that there is no remedy for him. The shirt hunt is the only effective way for the soldier to get rid of his bosom friends. The various dopes and patent preparations guaranteed as “good for cooties” are just that. They give ’em an appetite.
V
Feeding the Tommies
Food is a burning issue in the lives of all of us. It is the main consideration with the soldier. His life is simplified to two principal motives, i.e., keeping alive himself and killing the other fellow. The question uppermost in his mind every time and all of the time, is, “When do we eat?”
In the trenches the backbone of Tommy’s diet is bully beef, “Maconochie’s Ration,” cheese, bread or biscuit, jam, and tea. He may get some of this hot or he may eat it from the tin, all depending upon how badly Fritz is behaving.
In billets the diet is more varied. Here he gets some fresh meat, lots of bacon, and the bully and the Maconochie’s come along in the form of stew. Also there is fresh bread and some dried fruit and a certain amount of sweet stuff.
It was this matter of grub that made my life a burden in the billets at Petite-Saens. I had been rather proud of being lance corporal. It was, to me, the first step along the road to being field marshal. I found, however, that a corporal is high enough to take responsibility and to get bawled out for anything that goes wrong. He’s not high enough to command any consideration from those higher up, and he is so close to the men that they take out their grievances on him as a matter of course. He is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and his life is a burden.
I had the job of issuing the rations of our platoon, and it nearly drove me mad. Every morning I would detail a couple of men from our platoon to be standing mess orderlies for the day. They would fetch the char and bacon from the field kitchen in the morning and clean up the “dixies” after breakfast. The “dixie,” by the way, is an iron box or pot, oblong in shape, capacity about four or five gallons. It fits into the field kitchen and is used for roasts, stews, char, or anything else. The cover serves to cook bacon in.
Field kitchens are drawn by horses and follow the battalion everywhere that it is safe to go, and to some places where it isn’t. Two men are detailed from each company to cook, and there is usually another man who gets the sergeants’ mess, besides the officers’ cook, who does not as a rule use the field kitchen, but
