The order says, "Shave every other day." Now you, personally, may need to shave every day; or you may need to shave as often as twice a day; or, again, you may be one of those lucky and youthful souls who really don't need to shave oftener than once a week. But, as the order makes the every-other-day shave obligatory, you, no matter what classification you may fall under, [decide to compromise on the every-other-day shave. In that way,] and in that way only, can discipline be maintained and a pleasing variety of growths up and down the comp'ny front be secured.
The order being such as it is, you dispense with washing your face every day. You wash your face on your non-shaving day, and on your shaving day you let the shave take the place of the wash. To be sure, if you are a generous latherer you have to wash your face all over, including the remote portions behind the ears, after you get through shaving; but, being anxious to save time and economize water—thus living up to another order—you never count that in as a real wash. When writing home, you say simply that you wash and shave on alternate days.
A Use for Helmets.
To begin the shaving process, you secure a basin full or a tin helmet full of water—such water as the countryside affords. Usually it is dirty; sometimes in the regions bordering on what has been in German hands since 1914, it minutely resembles the drink that Gunga Dhin brought to his suffering Tommy friend. You remember:
"It was crawly and it stunk."
At that, you can't blame it for being crawly and stinking if it had been anywhere near the Boche.
If you are in billets or barracks, and there is a stove therein both handy and going, and if all the epicures and snappy dressers in the squad are not trying to toast their bread or thaw out their shoes or dry their socks on top of it at the same time, you may be allowed to heat your shaving water—if it can be called water—on said stove. If you are allowed to—which again is doubtful—you are generally saddled with the job of being squad stove-stoker for the rest of the day. This is a confining occupation, and hard on the eyes.
If, however, you are in neither billets nor barracks, but in the open somewhere or if there is no fire in the stove, or, if somebody else has got first licks at it, and you don't fit with the cook of the mess sergeant so as to be able to borrow a cup of hot water out of the coffee tank—why, there is nothing left to do but shave in cold water. This is hard on the face, the temper and the commandment against cussing. Also, if you neglected to import your shaving soap from the States and had to buy it over here, it may mean that you are out of luck on lather.
Anyway, after quite a while of fussing around, you get started. You smear your face with something approaching lather if you've got hot water, with a sticky, milky substance that resembles, more than anything else, a coating of lumpy office paste. This done, and rubbed in a bit around the corners, you begin to hoe.