and filthily dirty.

Gradually they got better. The glare of insanity became less obvious,
but a certain haunted look never left them. They were broken men. Months
afterwards they mumbled to themselves in the night-time.

Nolan, one of the seafaring men of my section who was with the lost
squads, also returned, but he had not suffered so badly, or at any rate
he had been able to stand the strain better.

It was about this time that we began to realise that the new landing had
been a failure. It was becoming a stale-mate. It was like a clock with
its hands stuck. The whole thing went ticking on every day, but there
was no progress--nothing gained. And while we waited there the Turks
brought up heavy guns and fresh troops on the hills. They consolidated
their positions in a great semicircle all round us--and we just held the
bay and the Salt Lake and the Kapanja Sirt.

So all this seemed sheer waste. Thousands of lives wasted--thousands
of armless and legless cripples sent back--for nothing. The troops soon
realised that it was now hopeless. You can't "kid" a great body of men
for long. It became utterly sickening--the inactivity--the waiting--for
nothing. And every day we lost men. Men were killed by snipers as they
went up to the trenches. The Turkish snipers killed them when they went
down to the wells for water.

The whole thing had lost impetus. It came to a standstill. It kept on
"marking time," and nothing appeared to move it.

In the first three days of the landing it wanted but one thing to have
marched us right through to Constantinople--it wanted, dash!

It didn't want a careful, thoughtful man in command--it wanted dash and
bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a
success--a brilliant, blinding success--but it stuck at the very
moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you
understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't "come off"--and only just.
But a man with dash, a devil-may-care sort of leader, could have cut
right across on Sunday, August the 8th, and brought off a staggering
victory.

CHAPTER XIX. THE RETREAT

It happened on the left of Pear-tree Gully.

Pear-tree Gully was a piece of ground which neither we nor the Turks
could hold. It was a gap in both lines, swept by machine-gun fire and
haunted by snipers and sharp-shooters.

We had advanced right up behind the machine-gun section, which was
hidden in a dense clump of bushes o