Energy books

It had been framed in a glass
case, and revealed, on its linen, the corpses of thousands of lice.
That vermin swarmed upon the bodies of all our boys who went into the
trenches and tortured them. After three days they were lousy from head
to foot. After three weeks they were walking menageries. To English
boys from clean homes, to young officers who had been brought up in
the religion of the morning tub, this was one of the worst horrors of
war. They were disgusted with themselves. Their own bodies were
revolting to them. Scores of times I have seen battalions of men just
out of battle stripping themselves and hunting in their shirts for the
foul beast. They had a technical name for this hunter's job. They
called it "chatting." They desired a bath as the hart panteth for the
water--brooks, and baths were but a mirage of the brain to men in
Flanders fields and beyond the Somme, until here and there, as at
Nieppe, officers with human sympathy organized a system by which
battalions of men could wash their bodies.


Pages:
210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234