"Blime me, Yank, isn't it arful the w'y 'e chucks 'is weight about?"
Yank agreed with Happy.
Across from Yank sat Ikey, with their mascot, a scrawny little cur, in his lap. Every now and then the cur would take his hind leg and furiously scratch at a spot behind his ear. Ikey, noticing this action, would reach under his armpit, and also scratch.
Sailor Bill was intently watching the mascot and Ikey. He, too, started scratching.
In a minute or so, Hungry started on a cootie hunt; and Yank had an irresistible desire to lean his back against the barrel-casing of the gun and scratch, too.
It was one of the chief indoor sports of the Western Front, especially during a monotonous lecture by some officer or non-com, for one of the fed-up listeners to start scratching himself. This generally caused the whole gang to do the same, the instructor included. It was just like a minister in the midst of a very dry sermon, suddenly stopping, stretching himself, and yawning, this action causing the rest of the congregation to do likewise.
As the whole circle scratched, the Sergeant-Instructor commenced to shift his weight from one foot to the other in an uneasy manner. They all gazed at him intently, and each began to scratch furiously. Sure enough, the Sergeant gave in and started unbuttoning the front of his tunic to get at some real or imaginary cootie. A nudge went the rounds of the circle. They had accomplished their purpose. The Sergeant's mind took an awful drop from the science of machine-gunnery to that of catching that particular cootie.
The gun's crew glanced at their wrist watches. Fifteen minutes more and the lesson would be over. The Sergeant was becoming confused, and was trying to flounder through the rest of his talk. They had no mercy on him, but kept up the scratching. At last, in desperation, he said:
"You men have actually been under fire with machine-guns several times. Can't one of you relate some incident of how, through some ruse, you put it over on the Boches?"
Ikey, grasping this golden opportunity to break up the lecture, and slyly winking at us, started in and told how a certain gun's crew located and put out of action a German machine-gunner by playing a tune on their gun; the German tried to imitate it, thereby indicating to them by sound the exact location of the German gun, which was later put out of action by concentrated fire from their section.