TCD MS 10823 folio 14 recto
[March/April 1918] quarter of an hour before “Lights out” which were at the early hours of 9 o’ clock, so that no reading was possible after that hour.
The following was a specimen of the way the average day was spent. We were called at seven, then came the cooking of breakfast, which consisted of a cup of tea and some biscuits fried in dripping, after which we shaved and dressed. On three days in the week there were hot shower baths, which were quite good, and cold shower baths on all the other days. The first roll call was at ten o’clock, after which we either learnt Italian or walked up and down under the chestnut trees; the next hour was spent in reading and translating the news out of the German papers. So called lunch was at 12, but it took very few minutes and was usually followed by a walk up and down, from 2-3 a game of billiards, from 3-4 preparing and eating tea, which again only consisted of biscuits with occasionally a little jam. From 4-6 we had a regular four at Bridge consisting of General Dawson, Lord Farnham, Troughton and self. At six we started to prepare supper and this usually took us on till the last roll-call at 8.45 p.m. As it was too early to go to bed then, we walked up and down for another hour under the chestnut trees. No one was ever allowed outside the camp under any pretext, so that the inside of the barbed wire became the whole world to us.
The chief interest in the camp was the constant arrival of new faces: it was a camp of passage and most people only stopped