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with a soft rustle of a flight, like a bee’s, flying over – I could hear them and looked once or twice to make sure. Then for the first time I realised it must be a bullet. It was so feeble, that sound, and so spent that it was quite comforting. One had expected something much more businesslike. As we got higher up the whistle did become louder, but I hadn’t any idea whether they were near or far.
    At the top we got into a path – I don’t know if it was ours or Turkish, but our engineers were building quite a fine path lower down – which led us for about half a dozen yards over the beginning of a plateau and then a shallow trench crossed our path, running from right to left; so we dropped into it. There were several men in it and I think they were chiefly engaged in passing ammunition along it. We crept along it, passing a certain number of men – Col. Hobbs seemed rather desperate of getting any artillery up this way. As we went along this trench there was a dead Turk lying in it and there was one of our own men, dead, lying just outside the trench. Some parts of the trench had a very nasty smell – there was no mistaking it – the Turks must have used it for purposes of sanitation as well as of protection – I believe their trenches serve for every purpose. Finally we got to where the trench finished abruptly on the other side of the plateau in a V-shaped cut through which you could see down into the valley and across to the other side of it. Col. Hobbs went on and had a look out of the opening and as he could do no good here we all returned to the beach. I stayed for a bit to talk to some of the men in the trench. One could hear occasionally a burst overhead and a whizz which I took to be shrapnel; but in this trench one was reasonably safe.
    By the time I got out of the trench the road up to the entrance of it seemed to be nearly finished. Men bringing up ammunition were resting there for a moment. A certain number of infantry were sitting down there also for a breather. The ammunition men didn’t get down into the trench but went straight on across the plateau – where to I could not see. It was a big labour bringing those boxes up the hill – but I knew it was awfully important.
    Presently four guns from the north started shelling the road up north edge of the hill, up which the troops were continually moving or else these shells were meant for the troops landing, I couldn’t say which. As I sat on the hillside above the northern knoll – just at the northern edge of the hillslope up from the beach – they were coming over my head, high over, in salvos of four and bursting rather high over the beach and the water in front of the destroyers. I can’t say I like shrapnel although it seemed to be quite familiar by this time. I sat watching it by the road for some time and then walked down through the scrub towards our gully. On the way I saw several of the men of Jock’s battalion carrying ammunition. They had a depot in the scrub there and a sergeant who evidently recognised me was in charge of it. He said the doctor had been attending to men on the beach, he thought, for a time and had now gone on with his battalion.
    Then I came down to the beach and had a little lunch – that is, some biscuits, a little chocolate and some water.
    The General was there – they were making him a dugout on the right-hand corner of the mouth of the creek as you looked towards the hills …
    After lunch I went up the hill at the back of the beach for a bit, and finally decided to go and see if I could find old Jock. I went up to the communication trench on the hilltop and through it, inquiring where Jock’s dressing station was. Several men had told me if I went over that way I should find it down in the gully. I asked several in the trench (along which ammunition was being passed) the way, but they told me they didn’t know – they were mostly 10 th Battalion but also some 1 st … I went along the trench to near