They plashed uphill to their blue-roofed huts on the south-west side of the town.
By the time the sun was up they were fed by their sister battalion, the 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties.

But what a sight! Their putties were not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been a core of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were imbedded in a serpentine cast of clay.

As for their boots, you could only infer them from the huge balls of stratified mud they bore round their feet.

Red mud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud--they lifted their feet toilsomely; they were land plummets that had sucked up specimens of all the heavy, sticky soils for fifteen miles.

Officers and men alike bristled stiff with a week's beard.