Friday 6 November 2015

A Bar of Soap

From The Graphic, 6th November 1915.


Text: 

An Incident of the Trenches

Tommy -- Look here, boys; someone's dropped a cake of Pear's soap.  What a quick answer to my letter home of last night asking for some to be sent in the next parcel. Line up.  We must have it.  It'll do for the lot of us; and, by George! we need it.

They got it, and had the wash of their lives!

Pears' Soap is doing capital work at the front.  The boys give a cheer when they see it.  There is nothing like it for freshening up the skin and keeping it in healthy condition.  It is the most economical of toilet soaps, therefore always make a point of including Pears in your parcels.

[The British Army did not have steel helmets until 1916, so the depiction is to that extent realistic,  though it's hard to imagine that someone might have carelessly dropped a bar of soap in front of the trench. One of the men is wearing apparently a knitted wool cap (or possibly a cap-comforter) which seeems more practical trench wear than the peaked cap.]   
  

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