midnight
So very possible was it that they might be surprised , and the guns turned on our own lines in support of a general attack , that in each of them spikes and hammers were kept in readiness against the need for spiking the guns before they fell into the enemy 's hands . Our regiment lay just behind these redoubts , in the rear of the artillerymen who manned our trenches ; and as the gunners had plenty to do all day long , and through the night too sometimes , the work of keeping up the night pickets fell to our share . `` It was while things were this way that I was on picket early one morning on our extreme left , close over the edge of the Carenage Ravine . I had come on with the midnight relief , and by five o'clock in the morning , when day wras just breaking , my teeth were chattering and I was stiff with cold . Name of a name , but it was cold those winter mornings ! We have nothing like it , even when the worst mistral is blowing , in our winters here in Provence . Down in the ravine there was a thick mist , into which I could not see at all ; but every now and then a whiff of wind would come in from the seaward and thin it a little , and then I would give a good look below me , for it was along the ravine that any party sent out to surprise us almost certainly would come .