Lice plagued all armies on all fronts. Living and breeding in the seams of clothing (left), lice respected neither borders nor nationalities. Here a cheerful New Zealander (middle) and some German soldiers (right) make the best of a bad situation.
As in any war, the most natural (and human) reaction was to try and find the humor in the staggeringly horrible conditions. These postcards, which would have been sent home by British soldiers serve two purposes. They allow the soldier to hint at the conditions that he's facing without alarming the folks at home about exactly how bad the conditions are.
As more and
more soldiers became disabled by disease, armies instituted measures to curb
and eradicate lice. The poster on the left notified soldiers about
"cooties," the diseases one could contract and how to counter them.
The picture in the middle is of American soldiers having their kit and clothing
super-heated in boilers in an effort to kill the lice. The poster on the right
is from the Russian Front. Lice borne Typhoid Fever swept the Russian army and
caused an estimated 2.5 million casualties. 4
Even after World War One, its veterans could not escape the lice with whom they'd been so familiar with. The louse was so ubiquitous that Blaise Cendrars, who was an infantryman in the French army during the war, titled his novel based on his experiences, "Lice." After the war the Veterans of Foreign Wars started an order, the Military Order of the Cootie (MOC). This organization, with its tongue-in-cheek-name focused on visiting and providing comfort to the tens of thousands of hospital bound veterans of the war and it's a mission they continue to this day. The Great War has been over for almost 100 years, but the memory of the Louse abides.