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file who used that implement.
It was always available, and just “filled the bill” in other respects.
Potatoes were too valuable to come into very general use for this purpose.
Quite often the candle was set up on a box in its own drippings.
Whenever candles failed, slush lamps were brought into use. These I have seen made by filling a sardine box with cook-house grease, and inserting a piece of rag in one corner for a wick.
The whole was then suspended from the ridgepole of the hut by a wire.
This wire came to camp around bales of hay brought to the horses and mules.
The bunks were the most popular institutions in the huts.
Soldiering is at times a lazy life, and bunks were then liberally patronized; for, as is well known, ottomans, lounges, and easy-chairs are not a part of a soldier's outfit.
For that reason the bunks served as a substitute for all these luxuries in the line of furniture.
I will describe in greater, detail how they were used.
All soldiers were provided with a woollen and a rubber blanket.
When they retired, after tattoo roll-call, they did not strip to the skin and put on night-dresses as they would at home.
They were satisfied, ordinarily, with taking off coat and boots, and perhaps the vest.
Some, however, stripped to their flannels, and, donning a smoking-cap, would turn in, and pass a very comfortable night.
There were a few in each regiment who never took off anything, night or day, unless compelled to; and these turned in at night in full uniform, with all the covering they could muster.
I shall speak of this class in another connection.
There was a special advantage in two men bunking together in winter-quarters, for then each got the benefit of the other's blankets — no mean advantage, either, in much of the weather.
It was a common plan with the soldiers to make an under-sheet of the rubber blanket, the lining side up, just as when they camped out on the ground, for it excluded the cold air from below in the one case as it kept
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