Our billet was a spacious affair, a large barn on the left side of the
road, which had one hundred entrances, ninety-nine for shells, rats,
wind, and rain, and the hundredth one for Tommy. I was tired out, and
using my shrapnel-proof helmet, (shrapnel proof until a piece of
shrapnel hits it), or tin hat, for a pillow, lay down in the straw,
and was soon fast asleep. I must have slept about two hours, when I
awoke with a prickling sensation all over me. As I thought, the straw
had worked through my uniform. I woke up the fellow lying on my left,
who had been up the line before, and asked him.

"Does the straw bother you, mate? It's worked through my uniform and I
can't sleep."

In a sleepy voice, he answered, "That ain't straw, them's cooties."

From that time on my friends the "cooties" were constantly with me.

"Cooties," or body lice, are the bane of Tommy's existence.

The aristocracy of the trenches very seldom call them "cooties," they
speak of them as fleas.

To an American, flea means a small insect armed with a bayonet, who is
wont to jab it into you and then hop, skip, and jump to the next place
to be attacked. There is an advantage in having fleas on you instead
of "cooties" in that in one of his extended jumps said flea is liable
to land on the fellow next to you; he has the typical energy and push
of the American, while the "cootie" has the bull-dog tenacity of the
Englishman, he holds on and consolidates or digs in until his meal is
finished.