“Yes,” I asserted, “I think I would trust you sooner than myself, in any important matter. But wouldn’t it be better for me to know the truth, so that I can contradict these insinuations?”
After a moment’s thought, he replied: “Well, possibly it would. But it is to satisfy you rather than them, that I will say, my father was born in the United States. He was, in that sense, an American. I have a half-brother three years older than I, who is said to resemble me, but we never agreed. And there was a misunderstanding between my father and mother that was never healed. It was by her request, almost her last one, that I have taken my present name. That’s all I can tell you, and that is all there is of consequence to know.”
This had to satisfy me, and with it I hoped to contradict any further insinuations that I might hear.
Soon after this we were on duty again in the front trenches, and were at first careful not to stir up needless fighting.
The duties of a soldier call for constant caution and alertness; and yet he must have a care-free cheerfulness with it all. He must not borrow either sorrow or trouble. It requires time to nourish either fear or worry, and the philosophy that does not cultivate them is the one that produces the most comfort for a soldier. So, during our stay at the rest billets, we ate and joked and enjoyed more than those who live in the calm of life. And now, when with a certain confident jauntiness we again took our places in the trenches we were full of confidence and courage; and it proved the wisdom of frequent rests in this nerve-straining duty.
We were, however, not only getting acquainted with our duties and its dangers, but were making acquaintance with its other discomforts.
We were admonished by our officers to keep clean and cheerful. But I could not see that we needed the advice more than those who gave it; for I came upon our captain with his shirt off curiously investigating the seams of it for certain familiar invaders that were a plague to most of us. It was shiveringly cold and damp, but these pests were no respecters of rank. Cooties, as Tommy Atkins calls them, can not be put out or down with a frown, or even by a general order from headquarters.
“They and the rats are,” said Sutherland, “a providential war creation intended to keep soldiers so busy as to forget, with scratching and frequent investigation, all smaller troubles.” However, he used sulphurous words, common from time immemorial to soldiers, because our French predecessors had left these pestiferous enemies behind them for us to fight.
“By Shorge,” said Peter Beaudett, “I dinks dey carries enough de cooties away to keep dem busy! But de rats! one got’a hold of the ear of me the las’ night!”
Sutherland, who was something of a reader, declared that he had never before understood why it was that in “Tristam Shandy,” so much emphasis was put by Uncle Toby in his assertion that “The army swore terribly in Flanders;” but that the reason was now revealed: for it surely was the cooties, that caused this profanity!