our billets in some reserve
trenches about a mile and a half away.

Here our difficulties began with daylight, as we were in full view of
the Turkish positions and within easy range of their guns, with the
result we were not allowed to move about outside the trenches during
the day. Water had to be fetched by hand about a mile and then had to
be boiled, and we had not, like those who had been on the Peninsula a
few weeks, collected a stock of petrol and biscuit tins for storage.
Later on we even got water-carts filled with water brought from Mudros
or Egypt, but not for at least six weeks, and meantime everything had
to be carried and stored in petrol tins, rum jars, and such few
biscuit tins as were water-tight. The wells were so congested, and the
water so scarce that water-bottles were not allowed at the wells, and
all we could do was to keep them in the cookhouse, ready to be filled
and issued as the water was boiled. Apart from the November blizzard
our first week in the reserve trenches, until we got our water supply
in working order, was the most uncomfortable of our stay. Rations were
really wonderfully plentiful and good.

That night we were ordered forward to complete the digging of a new
reserve area. Just as we were falling in to move off, a regular strafe
started in the front line only just over a mile away, but luckily it
stopped just before we were to move off. It was our first experience
of being under fire, and for all we knew it might have been the sort
of thing that happened every night, so we just carried on as if
nothing unusual were happening. Familiarity may breed contempt in most
cases, but bullets singing about four feet above one's head is one of
the exceptions, and Heaven knows we had plenty of experience of
"overs" on the Peninsula. They are undoubtedly a fine incentive to
work however, and once on the ground the men dug like beavers--and
they _could_ dig--and by dawn at 4 A.M. we had a continuous though
somewhat narrow trench. The soil, for the most part, was clay, and it
was tough work digging, but once dug the trenches stood up well.

After a day or two we began to be sent up to the front line for
instruction, 30 men per squadron at a time, the remainder digging
trenches and going down singly to the beach for a bathe. That was the
one thing for which Gallipoli was perfect. The beach was rather far
away, perhaps two miles, but we were all glad of the exercise, and the
bathing was gloriou