t officers and
N.C.O.'s were for a time attached to the Battalion, and proved admirable
comrades. The 42nd Division received some scanty drafts on the 23rd
October. These came from the 3rd line units at Codford on Salisbury
Plain, and were of excellent quality. Our draft was under Lieutenant
C.S. Wood, a very able signaller.

I noted on the 21st October that of the 300 men of the Battalion then in
the field, nearly 100 were on detached jobs--signallers, machine gunners
and details attached to various headquarters.

The result of the shrinkage in strength was a great strain upon the
survivors. "We never sleep," the Battalion's motto, was adopted
grudgingly as a rule of life. The necessities of the firing line
required vigilance by day and night, and the long frontages allotted to
the various units of the 42nd Division entailed broken nights and
laborious days for all. The men's physique became lowered. Septic sores
were general; bad eyes, not infrequent; jaundice of a type indicating
para-typhoid was common; amoebic dysentery very prevalent. Loss of
health meant loss of vigour. Limited to one bottle of water a day for
all purposes, and perpetually a prey to flies, heat, diarrhoea and
want of rest, the soldier had a trying time. Rations of a type welcome
in a northern climate were unpalatable in Turkey. In July and August we
were liberally supplied with vegetables and raisins, and with
much-prized golden syrup for our porridge; but the latter luxury then
disappeared, while for several months our only vegetables were onions,
which do not appeal to every palate. Jams, even when the pots were
adorned with pictures of one Sir Joseph Paxton, had very diminishing
attractions. The only strawberry jam we ever had on the Peninsula came
to us in tins, from which the labels had been stripped by some kindly
act of Providence. In the expedition's early days our men had been able
to exchange English jams for dainties procurable by the French and
Senegalese, but the monotonous and indefinable "plum and apple" of the
later summer killed the trade and extinguished all foreign admiration of
British jam-making. Only the flies were fascinated.

Our East Lancashire Territorials did all that was possible to relieve
the strain. We had a most able medical officer in Captain J.J. Hummel,
of Glasgow, who had temporarily succeeded Captain J.F. Farrow (our own
veteran M.O.) in July, but indeed all the units were happy in their
doctors, and _emeti