r for the rest of our service.
I know it did me.

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
clean-up. 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 some one 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 shoulder