sted on personal ablutions. Better a filthy face than a parched
mouth. The dirtiest water was drunk with a relish. A Dublin Fusilier
sighed for a draught of the cool and crystal water from the Wicklow
hills. "Vartry water," exclaimed another; "I'd be quite content with a
bucketful from the Liffey, even off the North Wall." Food was also
hard to get. The commissariat had not yet been evolved out of the
disorganisation attendant upon the landing. Under such a scorching sun
the eating of the bully-beef in the men's ration bags was unthinkable.
So their meals consisted chiefly of biscuits. Then there was the pest
of myriads of flies. The Gallipoli flies were having the time of the
life-history of their species. Big, ferocious, and insatiable
freebooters, they would not be denied joining the troops at their
meals and getting the bigger share of the scanty rations into the
bargain. The worst affliction of all, however, was the stench of the
half-buried and rapidly decomposing corpses in the captured trenches.

During the week which thus elapsed between the capture of Chocolate
Hill and the still fiercer series of battles for the heights of
Kiretsh Tepe Sirt, to the north, and of Sari Bair, to the south, which
were to follow, regiments of the Irish Division were constantly
engaged with the enemy on the foothills. Sari Bair was the strongest
strategical position of the Turks in this part of Gallipoli. Like Achi
Baba, towards the lower end of the Peninsula, it commands the
Dardanelles, and especially the great military road along the shore of
the Straits, over which the Turks were enabled quickly to send
reinforcements of men, munitions, and stores from one point to
another. One Irish Battalion actually gained a point on Sari Bair,
from which they caught a glimpse of the Dardanelles. This was the 6th
Royal Leinster Regiment of the 29th Brigade, which, as I have already
mentioned, was separated from the 10th Division and sent south to
co-operate with the forces from the Dominions. On Monday, August 9th,
a party of New Zealanders had fought their way up to a ridge of Sari
Bair, but were unable to hold it; and as they came retreating down to
the place where the 6th Leinsters were in reserve, they shouted: "Fix
your bayonets, lads; they're coming over the hill." Sergeant-Major T.
Quinlan, of the Leinsters, lying wounded in hospital, tells the story.
"Everyone ran for his rifle and fixed his bayonet, picked up a
bandolier or two of a