on and support trenches, and had the general situation
explained to them.

The night was devoted by all ranks to the improvement of our trenches
and to sleep when we were satisfied with our handiwork. More rain fell,
and we got very wet and smeared with that remarkably tenacious mud which
only Gallipoli can produce.

The following day (4th June) parties of officers were sent forward to be
shown the Eski Lines, others going up to spend an instructive night in
the firing line in the Centre Sector held by the 42nd Division.

We could not but be surprised at the smallness of this cockpit in which
three nations battled. From the cliff at Cape Helles to the top of the
impregnable Achi Baba was only 5-1/2 miles. The distance straight across
the Peninsula at the firing line was not more than 3-1/2 miles. On our
flanks we were shut in by cliffs along the Aegean Sea on the left, and
along the Dardanelles on our right. Every acre of ground we held was
dominated by the hill in front, about 720 feet high. Our right flank and
the vitally important landing places, "V" Beach and "W" Beach
(Lancashire Landing), were under observation from Asia, less than three
miles away at its nearest point. Somewhere across there on the Plains of
Troy the Turks had at least one big gun to harass us, "Asiatic Ann" we
called her, probably a gun dismantled from the _Goeben_. Their 6 in.
guns on Achi Baba could reach any part of the Peninsula they choose.

The ground we stood on sloped gently up to the hill, pleasant arable
land with here the remains of a farm and the trampled crops around it,
there an olive grove and fig-trees or battered vineyard. Elsewhere was
scrub and, in those early months, sweet-smelling and aromatic plants and
flowers round which bees hummed and butterflies hovered in the heat.

The Peninsula was rent by three great ravines; the Gully with its
precipitous banks on our left, and the Krithia and Achi Baba nullahs in
the centre. In the dry season only a gentle flow of water trickled down
these courses, leaving enough room for a path or even a roadway to be
beaten out by which men and rations and stores could be got forward
unobserved by the Turk. Their banks were honeycombed with crude dug-outs
(mere scrapings in the ground with a waterproof sheet or blanket for
covering) in which men sought protection from shell-fire and relief from
the pitiless sun.

Monday, 5th July, was a Turkish Holy Day. Under the personal direction
of En