This is another one of those times, by sheer word choice, that I was reminded of something I learned outside of this book. It was mostly the phrase "all the rhythms were wrong." Because the troops were marching at night, their circadian rhythm was outta whack. Circadian rhythm, according to Wikipedia (because who needs a trustworthy source?), is a roughly 24-hour cycle in the biochemical, physiological, or behavioural processes of living entities, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria. The term "circadian" comes from the Latin circa, "around", and diem or dies, "day", meaning literally "approximately one day".
What is basically meant by that is that everybody actually has a natural rhythmic cycle during the day where the body does different things according to the time. For example, at night you get tired. This is all due to your circadian rhythm. When this rhythm is interrupted, though, it can cause quite a bit of dysfunctionality. Combined with the stress of war in an uncomfortable, unknown environment, you can kiss Rat Kiley goodbye. If you'd like.
It's your bodily functions in a nutshell!
It takes a day to adjust for every hour's time difference, also. How long were they doing the night life thing? "Almost two weeks?" So they would've been just getting used to the difference when they stopped. That's a bummer. Poor Rat--he should've stuck it out a couple more days.
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