Sidney D. Light's WWI Diary, Postcards & Letters, 329th Battery Book Accounts

 
       "Take goin’ down there. That was regular enough. We fell in—same old squads left—and marched down the street, clean duds in hand or under the raincoat, depending upon how much rain you was absorbin’. Funny lookin’ places we stopped at, though. I began to wonder then.

        "It was just any French house on the street. There was one of them high gates though and we went through that—after hearin’ that we’d go upstairs and undress. What-da-yah-mean, upstairs? Oh yeh, the rickety ones, leadin’ up into an attic where some of the gang is billeted. After we undress here where do we go? (I wasn’t the only Unwashed that was wonderin’ that.)

     " ‘Line up,’ says the Top, ‘towels in hand—an’ soap. We’re going down again.’ Where, man? WHERE? We’re NAKED—we’re as we is! All right, I’ll shet up. Twenty-four at a time? I’M here. Br-r-r-r! Let’s GO!

       "Well, down we goes finally, shiverin’ and steppin’ high. Out into the back court-yard—or whatever you calls one of them Frog back yards. The rain fell plumb on us then. It was winter in the middle of February. My cold was downright happy. But some sort of infernal machine was makin’ an awful racket. (I later noticed it was a rovin’ tankcar, heatin’ the water with gas and pumpin’ it with the engine power. There’s some as argues that the water had joined the Anti-Cootie League, formed after the finee of Booze.)

        "Anyhow, the next thing after that dash was, ‘Leave your towels here!’ Which we did in a matchbox of a room with no nails on the walls and water on the floor. Then into the shower room proper, as the Chaplain would say. Twenty-four of us fit into it like suckers in a sardine can. But we got in—and was looking up at the framework of pipes above when some guy yells, ‘Look out! Here she comes!’  (No ‘On the way’ or nothin’.) And come she did, cold as Havre, Montana, and fast as Niagara. But we stuck, rememberin’ about the five-minutes-only order—which I forgot to mention—and hopin’ it would get hot. It did. Toot sweet----Damnhot.

        "Whereupon there was a medley of arms, feet an’ yells, such as mingles only in the life of a soldier. Every man-Yank of them was workin’ like mad to see how much he couldn’t miss.

      "An’ jes as I got the soap lathered good in my hair, off she goes.  Great guns, man on the fawcet, this is awful.  Succor!  Kamerad!  There’s dirt on me yet—beaucoup layers of it—an’ Lifebuoy in me eyes!  She’s comin’ on again?  Um-well, that’s better.  We’re to soap up now, savin’ water, eh?  That leaves me a lather ahead—me bein’ already soaped.

        "Suffering bobcats, my eye! The other one now! I’m growin’ wilder every bubble * * * Ah, THERE she comes again! Good old water! What? She ain’t dying down? She’s fineesh? Sanctum mazookum—and some bird just asked me if I liked the army—

        "Who’s got me towel? I’ll DO it–the Chaplain will have another ceremony—that’s it in the mud on the floor? !!!??( )!!%Damn!   Run for it an’ get out of the cold an’ rain?   Man, what care I if it pluieves all over me."