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

[82] same, and then don the new suit of blue. So far well; but he was a lucky man if he did not share his new clothes with other hungry pediculi inside of a week.

“Skirmishing,” however, furnished only slight relief from the oppressive attentions of the grayback, and furthermore took much time. Hot water was the sovereign remedy, for it penetrated every mesh and seam, and cooked the millions yet unborn, which Job himself could not have exterminated by the thumbnail process unaided. So tenacious of life were these creatures that some veterans affirm they have seen them still creeping on garments taken out of boiling water, and that only by putting salt in the water were they sure of accomplishing their destruction. I think there was but one opinion among the soldiers in regard to the graybacks; viz., that the country was being ruined by overproduc-tion. What the Colorado beetle is to the potato crop they were to the

“Turning him over.”

soldiers of both armies, and that man has fame and fortune in his hand who, before the next great war in any country, shall have invented an extirpator which shall do for the pediculus what paris-green does for the potato-bug. From all this it can readily be seen why no good soldier wanted his bunk to be regarded as common property.

I may add in passing that no other variety of insect life caused any material annoyance to the soldier. Now and then a wood-tick would insert his head, on the sly, into some part of the human integument; but these were not common or unclean.