Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1918 — YANKS QUICKLY ADAPT SELVES [ARTICLE]

YANKS QUICKLY ADAPT SELVES

American Youths SooruFall Into Free and Easy Life of the Soldier. SHAVE IN PUBLIC SQUARE Sight la So Commonplace That None of Townspeople Stop to Look on, Even When They Take to “Reading" Shirts. With the American Army.—lt hasn’t taken long for American youths to become acclimated to the free-and-easy lives of soldiers. They are as frank and as open and as shameless as theft French brothers in arms, and a good deal more so than their British comrades. ' A convoy of American troops halts k'or a few hours’ rest in some French town, not too far from the front but that the distant rumble of the Incessant cannonade can be heard, with occasionally the alternating buzz-buzz of a Boche airplane and the dull boom Of the archies hurled skyward-at it After “chowing" at the rolling kitchens that accompany them and washing up their mess kits, the doughboys usually turn to their toilets. Even though they are parked in the shade under the tall trees around the public square of the town, that doesn’t feaze them a bit. They unpack theft safety razors, their shaving soap and brushes and proceed to shave then and there. But It is such a commonplace sight that none of the townspeople stop to look on. The French children —“les gosses," as the Yanks have already learned to call them in true French argot—gather round, but that is all. “Read” Their Shirts. ' Then one doughboy who thinks he is a barber enters the nearest house and borrows a chair. He places it on a box and administers haircuts to such subjects as will take a chance on his handiwork with the scissors. These amateur barbgrs are not so bad, either, clipping off the hair close, so the doughboys stand less chance of having gas stick in their hair. Often the doughboys strip to the waist and engage fti the pleasing pastime of “reading their shirts,” as American hoboes term it. For, no matter where a number of men are congregated without women to tidy up after them, they are bound to have vermin. “Cooties,” the doughboys call fleas and body lice and other forms of animal life that inhabit their garments. Whenever they catch a particularly large specimen they examine it closely and announce that It is of German "origin, has escaped from the Boche trenches and has the Iron Cross stamp/ed on its back. If the Yanks bivouac near a stream everybody takes a dip right away*. Their officers always Insist that the men wear some sort of a breech clout in swimming, so the doughboys usually keep on the drawers of their B. V. D.’s and then stand naked on the bank of the stream waiting for them to dry in the sun. In the line the men shave every day when it is possible, because they have learned from the French that a gas mask fits tighter if there is no stubble of beard on the chin to let the deadly fumes seep in and burn them. They have become used to their respirators very quickly and wear them 24 hours at a stretch without it bothering them. Adopt British Custom. They have also adopted the British custom of merely nipping the nose clutch on their nostrils and placingthe breathing plug in their mouths without strapping the headgear over their craniums every time a gas alert is sounded. Il’ gas really materializes they proceed to adjust the mask according to regulations, otherwise they unsnip the nosepiece and spit out the mouth plug and go on about their affairs. Any tim j a dud shell lands —one that fails

to explode—it is likely to be mistaken for a gas shell and the alarm sounded. Nearly all of the doughboys in the line wrap their tin hats with burlap or some other material to cover the metal, as In walking through the trenches if one’s helmet strikes a wire or some projection it rings like a bell and Is often taken as a signal to open fire by some Boche sniper lurking hidden and camouflaged in No Man’s land. A stray bullet striking a barbed wire strand makes a ping that can be heard half a mile, and if one strikes a steel hat it sounds like a village fire alarm bell. -