506 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Herbert Corey 



THE SMALLER FRENCH VILLAGES ARE SERVED BY TRAVELING STORES OF THE SORT 



SHOWN HERE 



Every necessity of French rural life is carried in them, from cap ribbons to plow- 

 points. The American soldiers are looking for something to buy, for they have plenty of 

 money in their pockets, but the contents of the traveling store rarely appeal to their tastes. 



nicipal bath-house in the tiniest villages, 

 but ordinarily the men are obliged to take 

 their baths at the edge of a stream. Even 

 when quarters are established for a stay 

 of some time, it is not always possible to 

 make better arrangements. 



HOW THE BRITISH FIGHT THE COOTIE 



The British take notably good care of 

 their men in this respect, yet I found only 

 a cold-water shower at a school for offi- 

 cers last winter. The water could not be 

 heated, and so the Britons went under 

 the splash and came out even pinker than 

 when they went in. It sends a chill down 

 my sensitive spine even yet to think 

 about it. 



"I got a hot bath yesterday," said the 

 colonel's orderly. He was so extremely 

 set up over it that I asked for details. He 

 had built a small fire between bricks, fed 

 it with bits of twigs he had collected and 

 little parcels of straw and other odds and 

 ends, and heated water in the cup of his 

 canteen and used his mess tin as a bathtub. 



Many cups of water were heated and 

 he had bathed himself by fractional parts. 

 But in the end he was entirely clean. 



Not many men will go to such trouble, 

 however, and in fact he secured an es- 

 thetic rather than a sanitary satisfaction 

 from the process ; for he had no way in 

 which his clothes might be boiled. 



In the month of which I am writing 

 only a few lucky men of this regiment 

 had hot baths. This includes the officers 

 as well as the private soldiers. The men 

 did what they could by cold-water baths 

 and cold-water laundering to keep the 

 pests down, and they have been aided by 

 the insect powder which is distributed 

 from time to time. Unfortunately it has 

 not always been possible to get a suffi- 

 cient quantity of that insect powder, be- 

 cause of conditions into which it is un- 

 necessary to go. 



A GASOLINE SPONGE-BATH FOR WRITHING 

 SOLDIERS 



If ninety-nine out of every one hun- 

 dred men were absolutely free from 

 "cooties," the hundredth man would in- 

 fest the ninety-nine in a week's time 

 under military conditions. 



Sometimes unusual methods are re- 

 sorted to. In a regiment largely made up 

 of national guardsmen the hospital order- 



