Coffee or tea, biscuits and tinned meat, are served out. You are
ravenous, as you have lived on chance scraps during the day. Then you
make your bed, stretching your blankets behind your harness, standing
a saddle on end, and putting a feed-bag behind it for a pillow. Next
morning's feeds have first to be made up, and then you sleep like a
log, if you can, that is. I generally have to get up at least once,
and walk about for the cold. Fellows who are lucky enough to have fuel
make small fires (an anthill provides a natural stove), and cook soup,
but it's hard to spare the water, which is as precious as gold in this
country. Besides, drivers are badly placed for such luxuries; their
work is only begun when camp is reached, while gunners can go off and
find beds under waggons, etc. It is the same all day, except, of
course, in action, when the gunners have all the work. At all halts we
have to be watching a pair of horses, which have manifold ways of
tormenting one. To begin with, they are always hungry, because they
get little oats and no hay. One of mine amuses himself by chewing all
leather-work in his reach, especially that on the traces, and has to
be incessantly worried out of it. The poor brutes are standing all the
time on rich pasture, and try vainly to graze. They are not allowed
to, as it involves taking out big bits, undoing wither straps, etc.,
and you have to be ready to start at a moment's notice. There are
thousands of acres of rich pasture all about, vast undeveloped wealth.
Farms are very few and far between; mostly dismal-looking stone
houses, without a trace of garden or adornment of any sort. There was
a load off all our minds this night, for the H.A.C. had at last been
in action and under fire. All went well and steadily. My friend
Ramsey, the lead-driver of our team, brushed his teeth at the usual
intervals. I don't believe anything on earth would interfere with him
in this most admirable duty. He does it with miraculous dexterity and
rapidity at the oddest moments, saying it rests him!