bits of
stick to twist them up. But the blood was now pumping steadily from both
wounds and soaking its way into the sandy soil. I tightened them up, but
it was useless. There was no stopping the loss of blood.

All the time little groups of British went straggling past--hurrying
back towards the bay--retreating.

It was impossible to leave my wounded. I helped the cheerful man to hop
near a willow thicket, and there I took off his boot and found a clean
bullet wound right through the ankle-bone of the left foot. It was
bleeding slowly and the man was very pale.

"Been bleeding long?" I asked.

"About half an hour I reckon. Is it all right, mate?"

"Yes. It's a clean wound."

I plugged each hole, padded it and bound it up tightly. I had a look
at the other man, who was still bleeding and had lost consciousness
altogether.

It was a race for life. Which to attend to? Both men were still
bleeding, and both would bleed to death within half an hour or so. I
reckoned it was almost hopeless with the tourniquet-man and I left him
passing painlessly from life to death. But the ankle-man's wound was
still bleeding when I turned again to him. It trickled through my
plugging. It's a difficult thing to stop the bleeding from such a place.
Seeing the plug was useless I tried another way. I rolled up one of
his puttees, put it under his knee, braced his knee up and tied it in
position with the other puttee. This brought pressure on the artery
itself and stopped the loss of blood from his ankle. I could hear the
Turkish machine-gun much closer now. It sputtered out a leaden rain with
a hard metallic clatter.

"Thanks, mate," said the man; "'ow's the other bloke?"

"He's all right," I answered, and I could see him lying a little way up
the hill, calm and still and stiffening.

I found two regimental stretcher-bearers coming down with the rest in
this little retreat, and I got them to take my ankle-man on to their
dressing station about two miles further back.

It's no fun attending to wounded when the troops are retiring.

Next day they regained the lost position, and I trudged past the poor
dead body of the man who had bled to death. The tourniquets were still
gripping his lifeless limbs and the blood on the handkerchiefs had dried
a rich red-brown.

CHAPTER XX. "JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!"

"A" BEACH

SUVLA BAY

There's a lot of senseless "doing"
And a fearful lot of w