, went with Ellison, Taylor, and
Freddie on board H.M.S. _Lefroy_ (Commander Edwards) and steamed for "V"
Beach. Enjoyed a fine luncheon with Brulard and then started off for the
trenches. At Morto Bay we were met by Captain de Bourbon, a big handsome
man with the characteristic Bourbon cut of countenance. He took us first
to the _chateau_ whence we worked down along the trenches to where our
extreme right overlooks the Kerevez Dere. General Faukard was here and
he thinks that we ought easily to get complete mastery of both sides of
the Kerevez Dere as soon as we get the means and the permission to shove
ahead again. When we do that the advance will let our Fleet another half
mile up the Straits and the "spotting" for the ships' guns will double
their value in the Narrows. From the Kerevez Dere we worked along the
fire trenches towards the French centre and then, getting to a sheltered
strip of country, walked back across the open to the second line. From
the second line we made our way, still across the open, to the third
line, over a heather covered strip. No one ever moves here by daylight
except in double quick time as there is always danger of drawing a shell
either from Asia or from Achi Baba and so it was that "Let the dead
bury the dead" had been the motto and that we met many corpses and
skeletons. Merciful God, what home tragedies may centre in each of these
sinister bundles. But it is the common lot--only quicker. Here, too, we
found excavations made by the French into a burial ground believed to be
of the date 2,500 B.C. The people of that golden age had the sentimental
idea of being buried in couples in big jars. A strange notion of our
Allies unburying quiet people who had enjoyed dreamless rest for 2,000
years whilst, within a few yards, their own dead still welter in the
parching wind.

[Illustration: CREMATING THE ENEMY DEAD _"Central News" phot._]

Had meant to run across and see Davies but time had slipped away and so
we made tracks for H.M.S. _Lefroy_, and on back here to G.H.Q., where a
letter from Callwell was laying in wait as a refresher after my
fatigues.

Callwell begins by saying he encloses a document written by my late
visitor, Mr. K. A. Murdoch, although "there are certain statements in
this which are palpably false," and although Dawnay has pointed out to
him at the War Office "a number of passages in it which are wholly
incorrect as matters of actual fact." He says, Lord K., "who has no