John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

[81] discovery the same soldier would appoint himself an investigating committee of one to sit with closed doors, and hie away to the desired seclusion. There he would seat himself taking his garments across his knees in turn, conscientiously doing his (k)nitting work, inspecting every fibre with the scrutiny of a dealer in broadcloths.

The feeling of intense disgust aroused by the first contact with these creepers soon gave way to hardened indifference, as a soldier realized the utter impossibility of keeping free from them, and the privacy with which he carried on his first “skirmishing,” as this “search for happiness” came to be called, was soon abandoned, and the warfare carried on more openly. In fact, it was the mark of a cleanly soldier to be seen engaged at it, for there was no disguising the fact that everybody needed to do it.

In cool weather “skirmishing” was carried on in quarters, but in warmer weather the men preferred to go outside of camp for this purpose; and the woods usually found near camps were full of them sprinkled about times by the thousands. Now and then a man could be seen just from the quartermaster with an entire new suit on his arm, bent on starting afresh. He would hang the suit on a bush, strip off every piece of the old, and set fire to the