Each officer took out with him to the war a canteen containing cooking utensils, plates, dishes, and cups, but the wear and tear of camp life soon made havoc of this kit. At a farewell dinner given in March by the XVIIIth to Colonel Reignolds when, completely broken down by hardships, he made over the regiment to Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards and went home invalided, each of the officers had to cook some part of the feast in his own kitchen, and brought the remnants of his plates, knives and forks, and the articles of food he had provided to the dinner, where empty jam pots took the place of soup plates and champagne glasses. As soon as the Royal Irish joined Eyre’s brigade they began to do duty in the trenches, where parties were sent for twelve hours at a time to guard the works, make good with sand-bags the damage done to the parapets by the enemy’s projectiles, and improve the drainage. In March, when the weather began to moderate, the tour of duty was increased to twenty-four hours, much to the men’s satisfaction, as those who were not wanted by day for guards or working parties snatched some hours’ sleep in the dry caves of the great ravine which, as has already been mentioned, marked the left of the British front. The duty, heavy for all, was particularly hard on the officers, who were often in the trenches for seventy-two hours in the week. By day they had to direct the men at their labours, by night to be prepared to meet an attack from the fortress. Thanks to their incessant care in seeing that the men were always ready for any emergency, and to half-hourly visits to the sentries, the officers of the XVIIIth were never surprised, and whenever the regiment was in the trenches the Russians received so unfriendly a welcome that they never attempted to push home, though on several occasions they crossed bayonets with the outlying sentries. These local attacks were not the only dangers of night work during the siege. If the wind served, and the Russians heard a party at work, they threw fireballs, which on striking the ground burst into a great flare; then, guided by the light, they poured grape upon the labourers, who used to throw themselves for shelter behind the parapet of the trench until the cannonade ceased. Things began to brighten on the Upland in March: a great burst of indignation at home against the archaic methods by which the army was administered had roused the officials of the War Office and the Treasury to a tardy sense of their shortcomings: a gang of navvies from England had almost finished a railway from Balaclava to the camps; a transport corps had been organised and was doing good service,[168] and the troops, once more properly clothed, discarded the weird garments with which they had covered their nakedness during the winter months, and began to resume the bearing of British soldiers. So marked was the improvement in the appearance of the men that some martinets considered that only one thing was