"What have you against the Philippines?" Hal wanted to know.
"Well, Sarge, don't you enjoy this cool, crisp, bracing air up here in the hills?"
"Certainly. Who wouldn't? This air is bracing—life-giving."
"Nothing like it in the Philippines," answered Dietz. "It's hot there—hot, you understand."
"Yet I've been told that a soldier always needs his blankets there at night," objected Hal.
"Yes; if you have to sleep outdoors, then you need your full uniform on, including shoes and leggings, and you wrap yourself up tight in your blanket. But that isn't to keep warm; it's to keep the mosquitoes from eating you alive. So, after you get done up in your blanket, you put a collapsible mosquito net over your head to protect your face and neck. Then there's a trick you have to learn of wrapping your hands in under your blanket in such a way that the skeeters can't follow inside. After you've been in the islands a few weeks you learn how to do yourself up so that the skeeters can't get at your flesh."
"Then that ought to be all right," smiled Hal hopefully.
"Yes; but you never heard a Filipino skeeter holler when he's mad. When they find they can't get at you then about four thousand settle on your net and blanket and sing all night. You've got to be fagged out before you can sleep over the racket those little pests make."
"I guess the whole trick can be learned," predicted Overton.
"The night trick can be learned after a while," agreed Dietz. "But, in the daytime, there's nothing that can be done to protect you. You simply have to suffer. Then the hot days! Why, Sarge, I've marched north up the tracks of the Manila & Dagupan railroad, carrying fifty pounds of weight, on days when the sun sure beat down on us at the rate of a hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit."