h your face on your non-shaving day, and on your shaving day
you let the shave take the place of the wash. To be sure, if you are a
generous latherer you have to wash your face all over, including the
remote portions behind the ears, after you get through shaving; but,
being anxious to save time and economize water--thus living up to
another order--you never count that in as a real wash. When writing
home, you say simply that you wash and shave on alternate days.

A Use for Helmets.

To begin the shaving process, you secure a basin full or a tin helmet
full of water--such water as the countryside affords. Usually it is
dirty; sometimes in the regions bordering on what has been in German
hands since 1914, it minutely resembles the drink that Gunga Dhin
brought to his suffering Tommy friend. You remember:

"It was crawly and it stunk."

At that, you can't blame it for being crawly and stinking if it had been
anywhere near the Boche.

If you are in billets or barracks, and there is a stove therein both
handy and going, and if all the epicures and snappy dressers in the
squad are not trying to toast their bread or thaw out their shoes or dry
their socks on top of it at the same time, you may be allowed to heat
your shaving water--if it can be called water--on said stove. If you are
allowed to--which again is doubtful--you are generally saddled with the
job of being squad stove-stoker for the rest of the day. This is a
confining occupation, and hard on the eyes.

If, however, you are in neither billets nor barracks, but in the open
somewhere or if there is no fire in the stove, or, if somebody else has
got first licks at it, and you don't fit with the cook of the mess
sergeant so as to be able to borrow a cup of hot water out of the coffee
tank--why, there is nothing left to do but shave in cold water. This is
hard on the face, the temper and the commandment against cussing. Also,
if you neglected to import your shaving soap from the States and had to
buy it over here, it may mean that you are out of luck on lather.

Anyway, after quite a while of fussing around, you get started. You
smear your face with something approaching lather if you've got hot
water, with a sticky, milky substance that resembles, more than anything
else, a coating of lumpy office paste. This done, and rubbed in a bit
around the corners, you begin to hoe.

Indoor vs. Outdoor Shaving.