Private George Crook, 1st Battalion, The East Surrey Regiment, remembers the somewhat extreme hair care in the Egyptian desert during national service.
George Crook
Private George Crook

Other than that it was wonderful and, getting back to the duties of a ration truck driver, at that time I had a lovely mop of hair but being a ration truck driver as soon as you got back to base every fly in Egypt would descend upon your lorry and when you unloaded your lorry you had a lorryload of flies and 1951 to 1953 there used to be a chemical, DDT they called it, and that was the means to end all and the only way to kill these flies was to walk in amongst them with a canister of DDT and a high powered spray gun and use it to spray and kill all these millions of flies, but at the same time my hair was falling out and I was wondering "Why am I going bald at such a young age?" Later on in life I found out it was this DDT and my hair never need grow back so that was a casualty of being a national serviceman but it wasn’t a regimental barber.