Perhaps the funniest item uncovered at the Berlin submissions day is a printed black and white 'delousing chit', submitted by Helga Berger. Looking rather like a cartoon bank note this informed the bearer that he was now clean and free of the vermin of the trenches. Most likely a completely unofficial document, this comic piece of memorabilia was probably limited to one unit, and may therefore be quite uncommon. However it is also good documentary evidence of the cleaning up process, soldiers being communally bathed, or perhaps more accurately dunked and rubbed down, in disused breweries, or washed by the efforts of mobile bath units with their own travelling water heater.
Explore the archive to see more objects added to the First World War archive collection.
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