FAT FIGHTERS IN FUNNY FIXES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 238, 29 December 1916, Page 5 (Supplement)

FAT FIGHTERS IN FUNNY FIXES.

HUMOURS OF ARMY OBESITY.

Now that the British Army runs in* to millions, it has provided many new problems for the authorities to wrestle with.

Not the least weighty of these is that presented by the abnormally obese recruit. Fortunately there are not many of him, but what he lacks in numbers he makes up for in perplexity. The difficulty is to know how to house, clothe, and feed him. For one such fleshy recruit, who joined up in a northern town, there was no uniform that would go anywhere near him. As for boots, his size was absolutely unknown in Army circles. His bul ; £ was such that He would require a whole hut or tent to himselfand, liberal as Army rations are, to keep him going, he required about three times the amount of food served out to the norma) soldier. Small wonder that, after pondering over his extraordinary ponderosity, the military authorities told him to go home and stay there until furthet notice. A gallant French soldier's obesity was responsible fo rputting him in a good many funny fixes. For years ft was to him a weariness of the flesh in more senses than one. It restricted his enjoyment of Jife, though it added to the entertainment of others.

On various occasions it caused him to become jammed in doorways and to travel in luggage vans, not to mention sleeping on the floor because no bed of sufficient size was available. He tried all manner of means to throw off his obesity, but it continued to grow upon him. If he fiasted his weight only increased, and if he took arduous 'exercise lie lost nothing by it. When war broke out he carried his fat on to the battlefield. Even there ; t proved nearly his undoing, for one day ha got stuck in a crater made.by a German shell, and had to be hauled out by his comrades under heavy fire. They declare he has already killed several Huns by falling on them. Then there was the case of a certain French naval officar. Some time ago he arranged to make a trip in a submarine off Toulon. On essaying to board the vessel at that port, however, be proved to be much too portly. By no manner of means could he be nqueezed aboard, and the consequence was that the intended trip had to be abandoned.

The Italian military'authorities ara not without their "fat" problems. The other day an exceedingly gtout Piedmontose presented himself for training. Ho had made the journey from his fioine in a cattle-truck, into which he was hoisted from outside the railway station, which had no gateway wide enough to admit him. There tiro probably more abnormally fat men in the German army than in any other in the world. Not a few fat Hun* owe their capture to thb superfluous flesh they carried; and one of the loudest Laughs our Tommies have had in the whole eourso of the war was provided by it. After a lively "scrap," when the prisoners were coming in, a huge Bavarian, of enormous bulk, with a little Englishman astride of him, was seon approaching. With his human burd.m he presented such a grotesque spectacle that he was greetsd with roars of laughter, which were redoubled when hLs "mount" nimbly descended and handed over his twolegged 6teed as a prisoner.