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Updated: June 7, 2025
"Yours is all right, too, Dray," replied Jack, "but it looks too good to be true. Doesn't shoot up on land for a change, does it? I have heard of Dixies doing that stunt." "Oh, dear!" exclaimed Lottie. "I am freezing to death. I guess I'll go change my dress." "Good idea," agreed Cora, who was ready to leave her boat and go back to the bungalow with Lottie.
Sir Ernest and Hussey sledged out to meet us with dixies of hot tea, well wrapped up to keep them warm. "One or two of the men left behind had cut a moderately good track for us into the camp, and they harnessed themselves up with us, and we got in in fine style. "One excellent result of our trip was the recovery of two cases of lentils weighing 42 lbs. each."
There was vociferous grumbling and swearing that continued while we formed a queue and filed past a man who poured tea in our mugs from three large dixies. We sat down by the stacks wherever we could find shelter from the wind. We were still hot and perspiring after our morning's labours. We ate our rations in silence, for the resentful shouting had died down and had given way to a sullen quiet.
It is probably not generally known that it takes ten dixies full of snow, when melted down, to make one dixie full of water. For this and for hygienic reasons snow water was not much use to us. We were not at this time required to fire very much, but we were warned to get acquainted with the surrounding country, as an action of some importance might be coming off before long.
How I loathed those dixies! The more grease you got on your hands and clothes the more appeared to be left in the dixie! The outside was sooty, the inside was greasy, and after I had done my best, the sergeant cook would make remarks about my ancestors which had nothing to do with the question, and I could not resent them lest I be detailed for a whole week of infernal dixie-cleaning.
When the water in the vicinity of the trenches is bad, water waggons are brought down along with the ration waggons, and the men's canteens and a number of dixies or camp kettles are filled with water and sent into the trenches. Every man, besides carrying a "First Aid" bandage in the flap of his coat, carries a day's "iron" rations in his haversack.
After réveillé at 3.45 a.m., and breakfast at 4.30, the Battalion moved off at six, reaching er Rabah at 11, but not being able to move into its bivouac area till 1 p.m., after which camels had to be unloaded, fires lit and dixies boiled before tea could be served to the men.
While the digging was proceeding, the "dixies" were being boiled for the breakfasts inside four grass-screens, some of which we found lying about, so as to show nothing but some very natural smoke above the kraal.
In the meantime, Scotty was standing in the cookhouse, laughing his sides out at the driver's plight, and he had forgotten to notice that the mule was backing further and further into the room. Just then Mr. Mule got his foot tangled up in one of the dixies that were lying on the floor, and in attempting to kick it off, his foot missed Scotty's head by about six inches.
A little later dozens of fires would be crackling in the trenches, with dixies upon them full of stew or tea. Flies hovered in myriads over jam-pots. The sky was cloudless. Heat brooded over all. No one ever visited the trench except the Battalion Headquarters Staff and fatigue parties with water-bottles. Many soldiers stripped to the waist, and wore simply their sun helmets and shorts.
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