oung nuisance in our platoon named Rolfe, who had a
voice like a frog and who used to insist upon singing on all
occasions. Rolfie would climb on the table in the _estaminet_ and
sing numerous unprintable verses of his own, entitled "Oh, What a
Merry Plyce is Hengland." The only redeeming feature of this song
was the chorus, which everybody would roar out and which went like
this:

Cheer, ye beggars, cheer!
Britannia rules the wave!
'Ard times, short times
Never'll come agyne.
Shoutin' out at th' top o' yer lungs:
Damn the German army!
Oh, wot a lovely plyce is Hengland!

Our ten days _en repos_ at Petite-Saens came to an end all too
soon.

On the last day we lined up for our official "bawth."

Petite-Saens was a coal-mining town. The mines were still operated,
but only at night--this to avoid shelling from the Boche
long-distance artillery, which are fully capable of sending shells
and hitting the mark at eighteen miles. The water system of the
town depended upon the pumping apparatus of the mines. Every
morning early, before the pressure was off, all hands would turn
out for a general "sluicing" under the hydrants. We were as clean
as could be and fairly free of "cooties" at the end of a week, but
official red tape demanded that we go through an authorized
scouring.

On the last day we lined up for this at dawn before an old
warehouse which had been fitted with crude showers. We were turned
in twenty in a batch and were given four minutes to soap ourselves
all over and rinse off. I was in the last lot and had just lathered
up good and plenty when the water went dead. If you want to reach
the acme of stickiness, try this stunt. I felt like the inside of a
mucilage bottle for a week.

After the official purification we were given clean underwear. And
then there was a howl. The fresh underthings had been boiled and
sterilized, but the immortal cootie had come through unscathed and
in all its vigor. Corporal Wells raised a pathetic wail:

"Blimme eyes, mytie! I got more'n two 'undred now an' this supposed
to be a bloomin' clean shirt! Why, the blinkin' thing's as lousy
as a cookoo now, an me just a-gittin' rid o' the bloomin' chats on
me old un. Strike me pink if it hain't a bleedin' crime! Some one
ought to write to John Bull abaht it!"

_John Bull_ is the English paper of that name published by Horatio
Bottomley, which makes a specialty of publishing