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don’t think it hit the intestine.’ He said Jock had gone off to a hospital ship – he didn’t know which. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon Jock was hit. He was the only medical officer wounded.
    When I got down to the beach I found that almost everyone had a dugout – a sort of ditch cut, something between a grave and a cave, into the creek side. The General’s was pretty well finished.
    Next it was a little one which Glasfurd was sharing with Casey – they asked me to sit in it – a sort of little kennel place. They were awfully kind …
    I presently got my things and started on a dugout for myself. I started first up amongst the signallers. Several of them were lying cooped up there in little half-circular places, not unlike tiny sandpits. I found a vacant corner – only a few feet, for the whole place was covered with these dugouts especially on the south side (for protection against Kaba Tepe). I started to dig. The man in the dugout next door strongly objected – I don’t know who it was. ‘What do you want to keep a man awake with that damned digging for?’ he asked. ‘Haven’t you got any bloody consideration?’ I thought that was a bit humorous – a chap who was safely cuddled up in his dugout objecting to me making one on a night like this. I went on – but I presently got a better place on the other side of the creek a little way up the bank, just above the beach. As I was digging Ramsay and Murphy came up and gave me a hand – it really was a welcome help for I was fearfully hot. When they finished the dugout looked quite well – we heaped the earth on the Kaba Tepe side of it, which would keep out shrapnel bullets. But after they had finished I went on and dug and dug until it seemed to me ordinarily safe against gun fire from either flank – Kaba Tepe might get your boots, but not much else …
    I don’t know what time it was – perhaps 10 p.m. – when the dugout was finished. The staff were mostly sitting somewhere around not far from the General’s dugout. In front of it was another dugout for the office which was also used as a mess room – tea was going there at meal times. But I, like most others, never felt in the least hungry and needed very little to drink. After the dugout was finished I fetched my pack, haversack and things there … The following morning first thing I went out and cut some arbutus branches and spread them overhead with the waterproof sheet over them for a roof. I had a post across the top and Riley helped me heap sandbags there for a bit of head cover – very heavy work but it made the dugout reasonably safe and was certainly needed for the roof was hit with shrapnel pellets. The dugout was never wide but it was safe. I used to write there at night after turning in – scribbling notes into the notebook from which I am transcribing this. The nights were moonlit and fortunately one could see to write by the light of the moon (for I had no other light) on most nights. But on Sunday and Wednesday nights when it was wet, and before the moon rose or after she went down, one could only guess at the position of the words one wrote, and I found pages afterwards scribbled over with lines written one on top of the other. One had not many hours of sleep – three or four this Sunday night – perhaps from 10 to 4 the following nights. There was a cup of tea at 4.30 and breakfast at 7. This continued for about four or five days when the hour became seven o’clock breakfast, one o’clock lunch and about six or seven o’clock dinner – I was always very irregular so I never really knew what hours these meals were. I was out the whole day and wrote at night what little I did – bare notes. It was the third day – or perhaps the second evening before I discovered that the mess was going for I was out nearly all day long. My meals until then consisted of chocolate and biscuits and water. (I generally took the water bottle to the trenches in case the men