burst beneath them, but still the obstinate goats won’t budge. Another has come and this time they grabbed their pots and ran. We all laughed. By Caesar! it is about time they did run. A fourth shell has come and where their fireplace was is now a cloud of smoke, ashes, earth, and fragments of shell. Shells are bursting amongst us all over the hill and up and down the tiny gully. A rumour is flying around that the Turks broke into our trenches last night. They never got out again alive, I’ll bet. Johnny is sending his big stuff over this morning—high explosive mixed with the shrapnel-shells. A shrapnel bursts in the air and sprays the ground with hundreds and thousands of bullets, according to the size of the shell. One gun alone, firing quickly, can make a regiment feel as if it were under the rifle-fire of five hundred men. But when batteries of guns get going—! High explosive has its own terror. The shell itself plonks fair into the ground then explodes with a fearful crash broadcasting jagged fragments of shell.
...Finished breakfast under their cursed shrapnel-fire. They are “searching” for the Indian battery now, but their creeping shells are exploding above us—unseen marksmen sending unseen death into unseen men. These artillery duels mean sheer hell for us chaps in between. Not half a stone’s throw away from us, just across the gully are the dugouts of an infantry battalion. Owing to the direction that the shells are coming these poor chaps are getting it far worse than we are, for the shrapnel bullets are pelting right into the mouths of their dugouts. One shell has exploded fair in a dugout and blown the four men up into the air.
Another two are now hit. If it were not for our dugouts we could not live. They are perfect shelters against shrapnel only, except when a shell explodes fair in or above them, or just at the angle where the bullets will strike down into the dugout. The dugout is no protection though against a direct hit by a high explosive. It is getting fearfully hot now, shells are exploding every few seconds; the row is an inferno made hellish by the hot smell of fumes. The cry is becoming continuous, “Stretcher-bearers!” “Stretcher-bearers!” “Doctor!” as more and more of our poor chaps get hit. Good luck to all the medical men! We have the shelter of our dugouts, but they run out into this hail of shrapnel directly the cry goes up. The pity of it is that we cannot fire a shot in return.
Bits of earth come crumbling down from my dugout walls as I write, lying on my back. It is hard work writing that way, especially with the blasted ground rocking underneath. One poor chap opposite has just had hard luck. His mate was wounded in the leg. He knelt up, undoing his mate’s puttees. A fragment of shell whizzed into the dugout and took the top of his head clean off.
...This horrible fire is easing off. I stopped writing, just lay flat out and shivered as those great shells sizzled, seemingly just over my nose. We have had five heart-choking hours of it. It seems longer.
4
May 30th—It does not seem possible! A few hundred yards distant from this hurtling bombardment comes the command: “Slope Arm-ms!” “Or-der Arm-ms!” etc. Drilling men on a battlefield! Surely those in command have not gone mad?
...There was bitter fighting at Quinn’s Post last night. Seventy stretcher-bearers are carrying our dead and wounded down from the trenches. ... Just now we heard a riotous hullabaloo, and jumping from our dugouts saw a hare racing across a sandy hillock. All hands cheered the hare; they yelled and laughed. It must have thought us queer folk ... Things are quiet now ... A man was just shot dead in front of me. He was a little infantry lad, quite a boy, with snowy hair that looked comical above his clean white singlet. I was going for water. He stepped out of a dugout and walked down the path ahead, whistling. I was puffing the old pipe, while carrying a dozen water-bottles. Just as we were crossing Shrapnel Gully he suddenly flung up his water-bottles, wheeled around, and stared for one startled second, even as he crumpled to my feet. In seconds his hair was scarlet, his clean white singlet all crimson.
...Last night the Turks exploded a mine under Quinn’s Post. I thought the whole dashed hill had blown up. We sprang from our dugouts with bayonets drawn, expecting God knows what to come howling down upon us. But it was only one of those “local” affairs. It is all damned local. It depends just on what particular “local” spot a man happens to be. But what a lovely sensation, to go to sleep and wake up on top of an exploding mine!
A lot of poor chaps up at the Post were killed. The Turks threw hundreds of bombs into the shattered trench; distant though we were we could hear their howling “Allahs!” as they charged in the roarings of the explosions. The survivors of the Post were driven back into the support trenches to the fanatical delight of the Turks. But our supports and the survivors united and went over the top with bomb and bayonet and mad Australian strength and cut the Turks to pieces in the very frenzy of their victory.
...We hear now that the Turkish loss in last night’s little “local” fight was fifteen hundred. Out of a portion of the trench occupied by one company alone of the 15th Battalion they have just dragged fifty-nine bayoneted Turks. Between the Post and the first Turkish trenches, the enemy dead lie in huddled heaps.
...These little destroyers amuse me. One particularly cheeky spitfire sneaks close inshore to suddenly whip around and blaze away at the Turkish batteries like a fiery terrier barking at a big dog hiding behind a fence. The noise of her guns is bigger than herself.
...Fifty of our men were killed at Quinn’s Post last night, including Captain Quinn. But the heaps of Turkish dead lying between the trenches proved their sacrifice to Allah to be in vain.
...Firing is very subdued today. During breakfast we watched two big ‘planes being shelled by the Turks. As usual they could not hit them.
Sunday afternoon—Our guns have started a lively bombardment. The Turkish reply sounds condescending. The rifles are cracking from the trenches now. I wonder if an attack is anticipated. Rumour has it that the English and French have captured the big hill Achi Baba, which bombards us so heavily. But it is only a rumour. ... The rifle-fire is running the crescent circle of trenches for miles. Sounds like an attack. The bombardment is furious now; screeching devils burst above us every few seconds. Columns of smoke and earth are flying skyward as if the land were vomiting under the high explosive. Smoke-clouds are drifting over the warships down on the bay. The thunder of their broadsides crashes against the shore and is blasted back over the intensely blue sea. And yet with all this whining death about us there are actually a few men out of their dugouts tending their cooking-fires. No wonder the Turks call us the “mad bushmens.”
...A mine has exploded up in the trenches, its echoes are still rolling over the hills. Brigades of machine-guns are stuttering as if coughing their hearts out. The cooking enthusiasts have ducked. Two shells burst immediately above them. My appetite has gone. ... The Turk’s sharp-pointed bullets have a peculiarly piercing sound, especially when they land only a few feet away. They seem to split up then and hiss away to hell. ... A man lying flat in his dugout under heavy shell-fire feels so pathetically helpless; the deep, coughing grunts of the shells as they crash down from the heavens turn his belly to water, it does mine, anyway. When a blasted shell comes screaming in that tearing way they have when they are going to burst very close, I feel I have no belly at all and in imagination draw my knees up to my chin, in nerve tingling anticipation. But I don’t move at all, just lie perfectly still and “freeze,” waiting.
...I have just had a narrow escape: a shrapnel-bullet has grazed my right knee. Only a scratch ... The firing is easing down.
May 31st—Last night my troop and A troop were called out for trench-digging. My knee was too stiff for me to go. If my troop goes into the trenches without me it will be just too miserable: I want to be in the first fight the 5th are in. I don’t care so very much afterwards.
...Six of our crowd were shot yesterday. It is damned hard our getting picked off like this and not being able to fire a shot in return ... Last night they buried a few of our fellows and a lot of Turks who were killed yesterday afternoon. ... There has been a big explosion out at sea. The destroyers are racing towards it, their sides awash with foam. I hope no more of our ships have been torpedoed ... We are detailed for the trenches this afternoon, and I am sick.
...Occasional shells have been coming and going throughout the day. Corporal “Noisy” was