uring to restore some
kind of order. One had to keep close under the banks to escape the
shells. Not far from here was the emplacement of our old friend "Windy
Annie," but alas! Annie was constant to Abdul, and they had taken her
with them. It was a great pity we did not get the gun. No wonder our
guns never found the place. The ground had been dug out to some depth
and then roofed over with great logs and covered with earth and
sandbags; the ammunition--plenty of it--was in deep pits on either
side; artillery quarters were in close proximity, and the tracks of
the gun were clearly seen.

The shelling was far too heavy to let us pitch a dressing station
anywhere here, so we retired to the beach to find a place more
sheltered under the hills; the bearers meanwhile followed the troops.
Soon scores of casualties began to arrive, and we selected a position
in a dry creek about six yards wide, with high banks on either side.
The operating tent was used as a protection from the sun and stretched
from bank to bank, the centre being upheld by rifles lashed together;
the panniers were used to form the operating table, and our drugs were
placed round the banks. We were, however, much handicapped by not
having any transport, as our donkeys had been requisitioned by the
Army Service Corps. Everything had to be carried from a distance, and
water was exceedingly scarce. All day we were treating cases and
operating until late at night. Major Meikle and I divided the night,
and we were kept going. From one until four in the morning I slept in
a hole in a trench like a tomb.

At daylight we could see our men righting their way through the scrub
over Sari Bair, the warships firing just ahead of them to clear the
scrub of the Turkish Infantry. The foremost men carried flags, which
denoted the farthest point reached and the extent of the two flanks,
as a direction to the ship. With the glasses one could see that the
bayonet was being used pretty freely; the Turks were making a great
stand, and we were losing a lot of men. They could be seen falling
everywhere.

AMBULANCE WORK

Our bearers were doing splendid work; it was a long and dangerous
carry, and a lot of them were wounded themselves. The miserable part
of the affair was that the Casualty Clearing Station on the beach
broke down and could not evacuate our wounded. This caused a block,
and we had numbers of wounded on our hands. A block of a few hours can
be dealt with,