A WW2 comment from Ernie Pyle

[Klopstick]

From Ernie Pyle's book, Brave Men, page 165.

"More than a year ago I wrote an item about the numerous uses we'd found for the brushless shaving cream issued to the front-line troops. Its virtues were legion. It was perfect for sun and windburn, nurses shampooed their hair in it, it soothed and softened chapped hands and cracked fingers. And there at Anzio the soldiers discovered that if they massaged their feet with it once a day, it went a long way toward preventing trench foot.

It's a shame somebody didn't shave with it once in a while."

Just thought I should share that with everybody

 

[The Kiwi]

Ernie was a front line war correspondent, carrying a portable typewriter everywhere (no tape recorders yet), and notebooks when he couldn't set up his typewriter. He made a point of befriending the dogfaces in the thick of the fighting, and was killed near the end of the war by a sniper on some island on the way to Japan. His regular newspaper columns were carried by many of the stateside newspapers, and his books were best- sellers. I read a couple of them as a youngster of about 14 or 15.

http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/links/books-by-ernie-pyle/

I'm only guessing, since I was 14 back in 1954:

• Here Is Your War (New York: Henry Holt, 1943).
• Brave Men (New York: Henry Holt, 1944).

 

[phillylion]

Thanks to you both for sharing.