On early morning parade “the roll” was first called. The sick were then excused from duty, and the remainder marched off with shovels and picks and axes to dig trenches and construct overhead shell-shelters, wherever the fortifications of our encampment required strengthening. Such mornings passed quickly, and work went ahead, for, in the cool of the rising day, the labours were not unpleasant. Most men made light of their morning’s work, and enjoyed getting up a keen healthy appetite ere the “Fall Out” for 8 o’clock breakfast. Breakfast consisted generally of a measured ration of bread, cheese, and tea: sometimes bacon replaced the cheese, sometimes jam. The second morning parade fell in at 9 a.m., and again the men in camp were sent on to the fortifications. But now work was carried on in the heat of the tropic sun, for a soldier’s duties are at any hour of the day or night, and in any weather, in any hemisphere. They laboured on in the heat, swearing and joking (I think a soldier will joke, aye, even in H⸺) and perspiring, and with faces and clothes smothered in the fine red lava sand, which was raised by the labouring picks and shovels, or which incessantly wafted down-wind in gusts off the bare compound of the encampment. But, nevertheless, the work went forward, for it had to go, and defences became duly more and more impregnable. About noon the working party fell out for lunch, which consisted of a ration of bread, jam, and tea. Lunch over, the men rested until 4.30 p.m. Some fitfully slept under stifling hot canvas, others washed clothes down by the trough, or bathed themselves with water from a bucket, standing naked in the open; while still others gambled, mildly, over halfpenny nap and threepenny bridge. The afternoon parade fell in at 4.30 p.m. and worked as before on trenches for another hour and a half. It was then time to “Fall Out” for dinner. Dinner consisted _always_ of badly cooked stew, an unchanging dish which became deadly monotonous, and which, in time, many men could not touch, their palate revolted so strongly against the unseasoned, uninviting mixture. [Sidenote: SHORT RATIONS]