Of course, as Kelly said, scratching is common in the best circles out there. The man who has to reach over his shoulder in an attempt to remove an irritation from that almost unattainable spot between the shoulder blades is not shunned or looked at askance, but serves only as a source of amusement to his companions. Underwear searching is a common, very common, form of pastime. Though you may have been a very dignified and sensitive soul, your sensitiveness gradually dulls until you care not a "hoot" who may see you sitting in a brilliant sunshine anxiously scanning your clothes; or rising at midnight from a much-troubled sleep and by dim candle light beginning the often well-rewarded inspection.
So far as the ordinary Tommy is concerned, he ignores not only his acquaintances but the world in general. There he sits in his bare pelt and performs a massacre which in numbers dwarfs almost to infinity the killings of the Armenians by the Turks. In the town of Vimy I one time passed a jocular, though profitable, hour at this occupation while I sat on the floor of the cellar of an old brewery with a Scotch padre on one side of me, and a Nova Scotia major on the other, all absorbed in the same intense search, while above our heads the shells every little while hit the fallen walls of our shelter. And through the thin-walled partition that separated us from our soldier-servants we heard propounded a most momentous question which showed us that they too were employing their time to advantage. The question was:--
"Say, Kelly, what the h---- will all the lice do for a living after the war?" And for once Kelly was floored.
Often dugouts are but shelters dug into the wall of a trench, a thin sheet-iron roof put on top, and two or three layers of sandbags on top of that. This gives protection against bullets, shrapnel, or bits of shell, but a straight hit from a medium-sized shell would go right through. And yet it is strange how seldom these are hit direct, considering their large numbers. This may in part account for one's feeling of relative security while in them, but this feeling is no doubt also partly due to our resemblance to the ostrich which hides its head to avoid danger. Be this as it may, many a good night's sleep have I passed in shelters such as this, with shells bursting within one hundred yards at frequent intervals during the night. During the month previous to the Battle of Arras my orderlies and I lived in an abode of this nature most of the time, only 500 yards from our front line trenches. Shells continually fell well within the hundred yard radius of it--as a matter of fact, shortly afterwards this dugout was completely blown in--yet no one worried in the least about it. This is not told as a strange experience, for all officers who have served at the front have often lived in the same surroundings. This experience is related only to illustrate one type of protective shelter.