grey colour and full of sand and grit. I rubbed myself with my towel and
began to glow. I emptied the basin and left the shed, glad to think that
this one unpleasant duty had been performed. My face was burning.

It was still snowing and the wind was blowing hard. I trudged through
the mud and soon felt frozen through and through again. Several dark
figures went by on their way to the shed. I could now just distinguish
the duckboards and I quickly reached my tent. I lifted the flap and
stepped in. Some of the mud, with which my boots were smothered up to
the tops, splashed on to the blankets belonging to a man who lay near
the entrance. He growled incoherently at me. Most of the other men were
up.

I finished dressing and put on my great-coat. I picked up my tin plate
and mug and went out into the darkness once again. I was afraid I might
have to stand in a long queue outside the cook-house, but fortunately
only a few men were waiting before me. I joined them and we marked time
at the double in a vain attempt at stilling the intolerable pain in our
frozen feet.

About ten minutes passed and then the front of the cook-house was thrown
open. A light appeared and a voice shouted: "Breakfast up!" We raised a
feeble cheer and filed past while one of the cooks poured tea into our
mugs and placed a fragile wisp of bacon on to each plate.

I balanced my mug in one hand, fearing to spill the tea, and the plate
in the other, fearing that the wind might blow away the thin bacon
fragment. The snow fell into the mug and dissolved in the rapidly
cooling tea. It settled on the bacon which had grown quite cold.