The line forms on the right of the cook-shack. The cooks build big fires out in the open and set out great kettles of water. When the water begins to boil the parade begins, each man dumping in his flea-infested clothing--uniform, socks, underwear, wristlets and blankets. The cooks keep the fires stoked up with wood and the garments boil for a solid hour.
Then the men form another line and collect their stuff. They wring out the clothes the best they can and then sit down to "pick 'em off."
"They're fast little devils most usually," said the Dallas man, "but the sudden shock from warm water to cold air makes them stiff, and you can catch 'em easy."
The A. E. F.'s living in sheep barns simply can't keep clear of the things. They're in the rafters, in the hay, and in the planks. Weekly boiling of clothing only gives a short relief.
Really they aren't fleas at all, but a form of sheep tick. But they don't distinguish between sheep and American soldiers.
The Army gets some of its best ideas about equipment from the soldiers who have to use it.
Here's an idea, making for efficiency and convenience, which comes from an Omaha boy in the ranks. He says:
"Why don't they put bachelor buttons on our uniforms and overcoats? I've got a 'housewife' in my kit, but I'm working from 6.15 in the morning until 5 o'clock at night, and what little leisure I get I'd like to spend in the Y.M.C.A. playing the phonograph or shooting pool.
"And anyway, if I've got to do my sewing in the barn I live in, I might as well not try at all. My fingers are so numb the minute I take off my mitts that I couldn't thread a needle."
Not only that, said the Omaha soldier, but you usually find you haven't any thread in your "housewife."
There seems to be something in favor of bachelor buttons, especially since the people who sew the buttons on new uniforms and coats always do a poor job.
Private Pat: "Mike, what th' hell kind of fish be them ye're eatin'?"
Corporal Mike: "Hush, Pat; don't be disthplayin' yer ignorance--the ould Frinch la-ady might hear yeze! Thim's sairdeens!"
Pat: "Sairdeens, is ut? They're a small fish, ain't they? An' where, pray tell, do they grow?"
Mike: "Pat, I'm asthounded at yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'--oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they live off'n eatin' th' sairdeens!"