“There are two classes of men in a gas attack, the quick and the dead,” proceeds to poetry:
“The hard-boiled guy said gas was bunk,
It couldn’t hurt you, only stunk....
The hard-boiled guy went up the line,
Fritz spilled the mustard good and fine;
And now some people wonder why
It’s flowers for the hard-boiled guy,”
and ends with the admonition that seems a little ironical to one who must struggle to make green wood burn in a broken-down French range; “Cook with it, don’t croak with it.”
Today we put up a sign fill of our own over the counter. For some reason, transportation probably, there has been a most distressing lack of supplies in this area recently. Not only are we suffering, but the Salvation Army and even the sales commissaries have all been stricken with the same famine. Indeed I was told of one commissary which bore the warning; “We have salt, mustard and baking powder. That’s all.” Tired of replying several hundred times a day; “I’m awfully sorry but we haven’t any so-and-so,” I made a sign which was a list of all the “haven’t gots” and tacked it up over the counter. Thinking to be funny I included strawberry ice-cream among the rest, to be promptly punished by an innocent-eyed youth who inquired hopefully; “What kind of ice-cream have you got?”
Another boy read through the list once, twice, then looked up at the Infant disgustedly.