Thursday, June 29, 2023

Braving the Cooties: Pt 1

 

An Ode to a Cootie, sketch by Pvt. Walter R. Sabel
National WWI museum

The French called them totos; the British called them coddlers; the Americans called them cooties—or more colorfully, pants rabbits or seam squirrels. All the armies of the First World War battled lice infestations, and in the Great War, the louse was as ever present as shellfire, mud, and rats. 

In November of 1918, the newspaper of the AEF, the Stars and Stripes, published a letter written by Jimmy Murrin, serving with the 112th Infantry. Murrin wrote, “Some day when you are looking for space fillers, and you are hard up, you might want to slip this cootie ode and essay it; perhaps you have had enough of that sort of stuff—anyhow, I’ll take a chance.”* 

Up the Line, October 27

Photo from Murrin's memoir
We have slept in barns and barracks,
    In the mud and in the rain;
We have slept in broken buildings,
    Everywhere—in each campaign;
We have bunked with cooties rampant,
    We have slept on lousy straw;
And we’ve slept where shells have whistled
    In dugouts—but, oh, pshaw!
Well, we have hit a new place,
    Since we’ve wiggled up the line;
We are sleeping in a hen-house,
    And, say, the sleepin’s fine!
That is, we sleep when all is quiet
    And shells aren’t overhead;
Be it known, we’ll nap or slumber
    When the cooties aren’t in bed.
For, no matter where you travel,
    And no matter where you roam;
The doughboy’s got a partner—
    There’s a cootie in his home. 
—Jimmy Murrin, Hq. Co., 112th Inf.† 

Murrin’s Stars and Stripes article flatly states that the only soldier who hasn’t encountered the cootie is the man who “was never up the line”: 

Along the hillsides of the Marne, in the valley of the Vesle, in the fastness of the Argonne — where our boys have met the Hun — there the cootie has kept him company. You may not think that is true; but the cooties who are with the doughboys are game, courageous and true; they’ll stick to a man under shellfire — and they’ll keep him in motion when he longs for sleep....  There are some millions of cooties in France; how many are with the AEF the censor will not permit being known, and doughboys are having a hard time finding out. One Yank who has been up the line and who saw plenty of the fireworks very soberly wrote home: “I have not seen a single cootie in France.” He was right. For he added: “They are all married and have large families.” 

In 1918, the National Geographic headlined its June issue with the article “Courage and Cooties: Heroes without Glory.” The author, Herbert Corey, described for those on the home front both the physical and psychological toll of lice infestations. He wrote that researchers had identified lice as disease carriers: 

In the eastern field of war the louse is a typhus carrier and there is no known reason why it shouldn’t carry typhus in the west. Trench fever has been traced home to it. Until a comparatively short time ago this was a mystery, with its recurrent chills and fever and the semi-paralysis that is an occasional result.**

Corey stated that unlike other pests of the trenches that soldiers battled (such as rats), cooties were accompanied by shame and stigma. Soldiers might “know it is not their fault that they are infested, but the effect of years of civilian training persists. They still feel, against all reason, that there is something shameful in their state. They try to assume a joviality they do not feel.”** 

Murrin’s ode to the cootie is an example of that use of humor, but his post-war memoir describes the discomfort and dirt that plagued the men: “Many soldiers had gone through the war with fewer than a dozen baths, and most of these had been in streams or under circumstances where a thorough cleansing was impossible.”*** 

Corey, writing for a civilian audience, defended the doughboys: 

Perhaps the reader thinks there is something repulsive and disgusting in this tale of clean-minded young Americans picking lice out of their clothing and killing them by drops from a burning candle. Perhaps there is.... To my mind the men who can do this and still laugh—bearing in mind their rearing and clean years of their youth—are almost as nearly heroes as those who ‘hop over’ when the whistle sounds the zero hour. The ones are called upon to keep up their courage under a day-long and night-long degradation—a constant, crawling, loathsome irritation—while the others spend themselves freely in one fine burst. I cannot distinguish between brave men.** 

Corey applauded the the cheerful endurance of the American soldiers who disguised their discomfort and repugnance “with a rough form of humor.... Perhaps that is not the courage that seeks a fleeting glory in the cannon’s mouth, but it seems to me it is a fine courage just the same.”** Demonstrating that peculiar courage, one American soldier of the war noted, “ “I don’t mind the hikes now.... for all I have to do is to sort of shoo my shirt along.”**
_____________________________________________________________________

* “Not a Single One,” by Jimmy Murrin, Stars and Stripes, 29 Nov. 1918, p. 4.
† Murrin (Corporal James A. Murrin) survived the war and returned home to Pennsylvania, publishing his memoir in 1919: With the 112th in France: A Doughboy’s Story. He returned to work as a journalist, except for a brief interlude when “He returned to France eight years after the war ended as a member of the Battlefield Memorial Commission” (from his obituary, “James Murrin Funeral Is Set for Friday,” Oil City Derrick, 3 Mar. 1971, p. 2).
** “Cooties and Courage” by Herbert Corey, National Geographic, June 1918, p. 501, 498–499, 497, 503, 509.
*** With the 112th in France, by James A Murrin, Lippincott, 1919, p. 385. 


Battling the Cooties: Part II

How bad were lice infestations in the First World War? One soldier’s shirt “was found to contain 10,428 lice, and more than 10,000 eggs were found under a microscope,” while nurses serving in the 1915 typhus epidemic in Serbia reported “gray patches the size of one’s two hands upon the bodies of men brought into the hospital. The pests were so thick in these patches that from a little distance they presented the appearance of felted cloth.”*

All armies struggled with the problem. The British reported that 95% of men who had served for six months were lousy. On average, they estimated that each man carried 20 lice, but some were super carriers, infested by 100 to 300 insects.*

In addition to examining the severe discomfort and intense itching caused by “cooties,” researchers had begun to learn that lice carried disease. A National Geographic article published in 1918 entitled “Hospital Heroes Convict the ‘Cootie’” describes a US Army medical research program that recruited 66 healthy volunteers for testing to determine if trench fever was “a germ disease.” Trench fever was a serious threat, causing recurrent chills and fever. It was sometimes accompanied by semi-paralysis, and in the average case, a man diagnosed with trench fever “was unfit as a fighter for six months.”**

In one experiment, healthy soldiers were injected with blood that had been taken from men with trench fever: 23 of the 34 men inoculated developed the disease. In another experiment, researchers collected lice from men with trench fever, then allowed these lice to bite 22 of the healthy recruits. Twelve of them developed trench fever. 

National Geographic celebrated the courage of those who had volunteered for medical experimentation:

The experiments conducted on America’s Sixty-six have fastened the guilt of contagion-bearing upon the body louse.... It is a simple problem in multiplication to appreciate how tremendously America’s Sixty-six may have contributed to the power of our blows against the Huns by giving science the information which will result in keeping our soldiers fit for service.**

Striking a different tone, a poem published in the AEF’s Stars and Stripes imagines weaponizing the cootie: 

If I were a cootie (pro-Ally, of course),
I’d hie me away on a Potsdam-bound horse,
And I’d seek out the Kaiser (the war-maddened cuss),
And I’d be a bum cootie if I didn’t muss
His Imperial hid from his head to his toe!
He might hide from the bombs, but I’d give him no show!
If I were a cootie, I’d deem it my duty
To thus treat the Kaiser,
        Ah, oui.

And after I’d thoroughly covered Bill’s area,
I’d hasten away to the Prince of Bavaria,
And chew him a round or two–under the Linden–
Then pack up my things and set out for old Hinden–
(Old Hindy’s the guy always talking ‘bout strafing)–
To think what I’d do to that bird sets me laughing!
If I were a cootie, I’d deem it my duty
To thus treat the Prince and old Hindy,
        Ah, oui!

I’d ne’er get fed up on Imperial gore–
I might rest for a while, but I’d go back for more.
I’d spend a few days with that Austrian crew,
And young Carl himself I’d put down for a chew;
There’d be no meatless days for this cootie, I know,
They’d all get one jolly good strafing or so.
For if I were a cootie, I’d deem it my duty
To thus treat their damnships,
        Ah, oui!
                —A.P. Bowen, Sgt., R.T.O. (published 1 Nov. 1918)

But the US Army was determined to eradicate the pest. Men were swabbed with gasoline, smeared with ointments (vermijelli—a mix of crude oil and melted paraffin—and mercury), and dosed with NCI powder (a mixture of naphthalene, creosote, and idoform). But the most effective way to combat the louse was with boiling water, the only truly effective way to kill the nits or eggs.  

Delousing machines, nicknamed by the troops “cootie mills,” were developed for the field. Jack Campbell, a soldier with the 317th Infantry, wrote in his diary, 

Double-barrelled cootie cannon
 A “cootie-mill” is a wonderful institution.  You go in infested with lice, and in vile shape – you come out sweet and clean. These “mills” are all built pretty much on the same plan and you can get everything – shower, shave, shoe shine. They are long narrow buildings only one room thick.  First you enter “the office” where you give your “case history.” From here you enter the “undressing room” and here all your clothes, except underwear and socks, are tied into a tight bundle with your belt and put into a wire basket which is carried, on a moving belt to the steam chamber – while you, minus your underwear and socks, are given a towel and a piece of soap the size of a loaf of sugar and herded into the showers. Naturally, with hundreds waiting in line each soldier's time under the shower is limited and since these showers “just drip” instead of  “shower” you are lucky if you get wet all over in the time allotted. From the shower you enter the dressing room where you are given clean underwear and socks, and also waiting you are your “deloused” clothes – two sizes smaller from the steaming and very, very wrinkled.”***

By April of 1919, the Stars and Stripes boasted, “Whole Cootie Clan Rapidly Dying Off.” In early November at the time of the armistice, it was estimated that 90% of all AEF troops were “lousy,” but four months later, no more than 10% of American soldiers were infected: “Of the 454,705 troops examined, only 8,820 were found to be harboring cooties.” The aggressive elimination of the disease-bearing pest was attributed to a combination of factors: “Better living conditions, increased facilities for bathing and individual determination not to be infested with cooties, together with the activities of the delousing and bathing outfits.”****

Ah, oui!
____________________________________________________________________
* “Cooties and Courage” by Herbert Corey, National Geographic, June 1918, p. 509.
** “Hospital Heroes Convict the ‘Cootie,’” National Geographic, June 1918, p. 510.
*** Jack Campbell's Diary, Co. G, 317th Infantry, Virginia Historical Society, 9411.
**** “Whole Cootie Clan Rapidly Dying Off,” Stars and Stripes, 4 April 1919, 3. 

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Horses he loved, and laughter, and the sun

Many of the posts on this blog have begun as secondhand bookshop finds: worn, slim volumes that bear witness to a war that changed the world. 

Browsing a Cambridge secondhand book shop several months ago, I spied on an upper shelf a faded spine with the title The Life I Love, Verses by WKH. As I reached for the book, I wondered at the identity of the mysterious W.K.H. The only writer I know with those initials is William Kersley Holmes, an obscure First World War poet. Holmes is listed on the Imperial War Museum’s website Lives of the First World War as serving with the Royal Horse Artillery and the Royal Field Artillery. 

He published two volumes of war poetry (Ballads of Fields and Billets and More Ballads of Fields and Billets). Two of his poems appear on this blog (“Singing Tipperary” and “The Soldier Mood,” one of my favorites), and both are included in International Poetry of the First World WarHolmes survived the war, publishing Tramping Scottish Hills in 1946, but previously, I could find no other mention of him until his death in 1966. 

Surprisingly, the volume I had found (and then purchased for £5) was authored by Holmes and labeled “author’s presentation copy.” Published in 1958, the collection was signed by Holmes with a personal note for “Dorothy, a token of friendship.” The inside jacket provides a bit more context: 

The title of this collection is the key-note of the contents. The verses, most of which have appeared in Punch, Country Life and other periodicals, though varying from grave to gay, are alike in expressing the philosophy of a ‘long-term optimist’. In one poem in memory of a friend killed in the First World War, the author records that ‘horses he loved and laughter and the sun’; these, with hills and the comradeship of his fellowmen, are the inspiration of W.K.H. His verse conforms, for the most part, to the long-established standards, for his aim is to share with as many readers as possible his love of nature, his appreciation of what has given him food for thought, and his amusement at what has appealed to his sense of humour.*


The volume’s Introduction, written by Sir William Robieson (former editor of The Glasgow Herald) adds further detail: 

Readers of my generation have savoured with pleasure all their adult lives the light verse which has appeared so consistently in Punch and elsewhere over the initials “W.H.K.”. Those who lived in Scotland have also expected to find—for example in The Glasgow Herald—over the same initials or perhaps over the name “W.K. Holmes’ verses of a more serious kind or descriptive pieces of great charm relating to the countryside. And a select group knew that those initials and that name concealed the pleasant personality of the senior editor of Blackie & Son—with a varied earlier career to his credit as banker, hill-limber, soldier and journalist. 

All these, whatever their degree of acquaintance with him, will welcome this collection of Mr. Kersley Holmes’s fugitive pieces. It shows better than any essay could do the range of his interests, the philosophy he has developed over what is now a long lifetime, and his mastery of a variety of verse forms. ‘W.K.H’ is here in many moods and over a great variety of experience—as a Gunner of the First World War, a connoisseur of Scottish place-names, a lover of the hills, and in his retirement an interested spectator of life.*

Despite being published forty years after the end of the First World War, the collection includes four war poems: “Bran Mash” (subtitled “A Flash-back to 1915”), a tender account of feeding war horses and finding comfort in their companionship; “The Truth about Ulysses,” a poem that relates the long-term effects of outsider status on returning soldiers; “The Ultimate Outrage, 1916,” an ode to a “favourite shirt” that was destroyed by enemy shell fire, and the poem “Killed in Action,” alluded to in the book’s jacket cover. 

© IWM Q 34105

Killed in Action
Messines, 1917

Horses he loved, and laughter, and the sun,
     A song, wide spaces and the open air;
The trust of all dumb living things he won,
     And never knew the luck too good to share.

His were the simple heart and open hand
     And honest faults he never strove to hide;
Problems of life he could not understand
     But as a man would wish to die he died.

Now, though he will not ride with us again,
     His merry spirit seems our comrade yet,
Freed from the power of weariness or pain,
     Forbidding us to mourn—or to forget.
               —W.K.H. (William Kersley Holmes)

This simple elegy for a man who died nearly a half-century earlier recalls the depth of friendship soldiers shared in the trenches as well as the heartbreak of losses that returned home with those who served, never to be forgotten. 

In June of 1915, the Glasgow Herald reviewed W. Kersley Holmes’ war poems, writing, “They range from the grave to the humorous, from the realistic to the romantic, but something of the brightness of youth is in them all, something of that gallant gaiety which makes a jest of the discomforts of life, yet never thinks of life itself as a jest.”**
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* The Life I Love, Verses by W.K.H, by W. Kersley Holmes, Blackie & Sons, Glasgow, 1958.
**Review qtd. in the Dollar Magazine, vol. 14, no. 54, June 1915, pp. 74–75 (a publication of Dollar Academy, Holmes’s alma mater).