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Updated: June 10, 2025
"I 'ain't got a Jane, of course, so I decides to take a little look around all by myself. Well, I goes down the Chomps-Eleezy feelin' pretty good and sorta peppy and lookin' for trouble. I see all them army heroes the vets and the dentists and the S O S each with a skirt, and I passes Matthews, here, with his skirt clingin' to him like a cootie." "Cut it out, you big stiff," interposed Matthews.
The time had come, I am glad to say, when we and the cooties, must forever part. But the cootie in the front line trenches was not altogether an enemy. That may sound strange, but the fact is, when we were fighting the cooties and chasing them out of our dug-outs, our minds were not on our more serious troubles and we were unmindful of the dangers that surrounded us.
The cootie, or the "chat" as he is called by the officers, is the common body louse. Common is right. I never got rid of mine until I left the service. Sometimes when I get to thinking about it, I believe I haven't yet. In the morning the members of the raiding party were taken back a mile or so to the rear and were given instruction and rehearsal.
"Like a cootie," continued Steve, "and I got sorta de-pressed. So I sez, me for the quiet, unfrequented streets over acrost the river. Well, sir, I was just passin' the Loover that big museum, or whatever it is when I see a hearse comin' in the opposite direction. It was a pretty sick-lookin' hearse, too.
The tale is even told of cootie fights during long, rainy winter evenings which must be spent indoors. The harborers of the contestants simply reached under their shirts, drew forth a doughty grey-backed warrior, placed him on a child's slate which was used as an arena, and the fight was on. A camp named Lousy Level is said to have made a specialty of this sort of battle.
But she shook her head and I heard her telling mother later that, in her opinion, 'cooties' and 'sarks' were not proper subjects for young girls to talk about. She was especially horrified when Jem wrote in his last letter to mother, 'Tell Susan I had a fine cootie hunt this morning and caught fifty-three! Susan positively turned pea-green. 'Mrs.
"He's afraid of what will happen to his blasted career if he marries a girl who's been in the chorus." "But, my dear boy!" Uncle Chris blinked. "But, my dear boy! This is ridiculous . . . Surely, if I were to speak a word . . ." "You can if you like. I wouldn't speak to the cootie again if you paid me! But it won't do any good, so what's the use?"
Just imagine it, writing a love letter during a "cootie" hunt; but such is the creed of the trenches. Upon enlistment we had identity disks issued to us. These were small disks of red fiber worn around the neck by means of a string. Most of the Tommies also used a little metal disk which they wore around the left wrist by means of a chain.
No card playing, no shooting crap. The canteen contained chocolate, candy, writing materials, postage stamps, towels, shaving materials, talcum powder, soap, shoestrings, handkerchiefs in little sealed packets, buttons, cootie medicine and other like articles. The Salvation Army did not sell nor give away either tobacco or cigarettes.
He finds his way into all branches of the service, and I have even seen a dignified colonel wiggle his shoulders anxiously. Some of the cootie stories have become classical, like this one which was told from the North Sea to the Swiss border. It might have happened at that. A soldier was going over the top when one of his cootie friends bit him on the calf.
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