vening years the game losers of Gallipoli had avenged
themselves at Bagdad, Jerusalem, and Aleppo. In every field the
Turkish Armies had been destroyed: and now the forts of the
Dardanelles were to be surrendered, and the Narrows thrown open to
the Allies. One wished that the dead on Gallipoli might be awakened,
if only for a minute, at the sound of the old language spoken among
the graves, to see the khaki ashore again, and British ships sailing
in triumph up the Straits.

Many of the old Colonel's visions of the emancipation of the Arab
world, and the control of the junction of the continents, had thus
been realised. And a nobler crusade than that which he saw in the
Dardanelles campaign had been fought and won by the army which
entered Jerusalem. And, note it well, the men who won these
victories were in great part the men who escaped from Suvla and
Helles. For, like the Suvla Army, the whole Helles Army escaped. And
the Turk was a fool to let them go.

But, before I give you Monty's last word, let me tell you where I am
at this moment. It is early evening, and I am writing these closing
lines, in which I bid you farewell, sitting on the floor of my
kennel-like dug-out in a Belgian trench. There is a most glorious
bombardment going on overhead. It has thundered over our trench for
days and nights on to the German lines, which to-morrow, when we go
over the top, we shall capture, as surely as we captured the one I
am sitting in now. Yes, Turkey is out of the game; Bulgaria is out
of it; Austria is crying for quarter; and Germany is disintegrating
before our advance.

Our bombardment is the most uplifting and exciting thing. So fast do
the shells fly over and detonate on the enemy ground that it is
almost impossible to distinguish the isolated shell-bursts; they are
lost in one dense fog of smoke. Just now we ceased to be rational as
we stood watching it. "That's the stuff to give 'em!" cried a Tommy
in his excitement. "Pump it over! Pump it over!" and, as some German
sand-bags flew into the air: "Gee! Look at that! Are we downhearted?
NO! 'Ave we won? YES!" And I wanted to throw up my hat and cheer.
There seized me the sensation I got when my house was winning on the
football-ground at school. "We're on top! On top of the Boche, and
he asked for it!"

I have now returned to my dug-out, feeling it in my heart to be
sorry for the Germans. I am impatient to finish my story, for we go
over the top in the morning.