lone drew men
away. The soil was dark red, caked and crumbling. Here and there the
dead were buried into the parados, with such inscriptions as "Sacred to
the Memory of an Unknown Comrade. _R.I.P._"

The Mule Sap connected the trenches with Headquarters. We gathered
curios, Turkish and German, from among its debris. At Headquarters the
telephone, orderly-room and dressing-station alone denoted the presence
of war. They were fixed in a beautiful ravine, looking upon a smooth
sea, warm in the sunlight, with Imbros ten miles across the water. The
meals were of first importance, but sandbags are uncomfortable seats,
and the heat was trying. Pleasant it was in the cool of the evening to
go to sleep with one's Burberry as a pillow. The stars shone kindly
down, as they had shone long ago upon the heroes of the Iliad on the
Plains of Troy, seven miles away across the Dardanelles, upon the
Crusaders and Byzantines. You were asleep in a moment, and hardly
stirred until 5 A.M., when it was time for "Stand to." Daylight moved
quickly across the desolate waste, and by six o'clock another day of war
and waiting had dawned.

The Territorial's thoughts turn to home far more often than do those of
the Regular, for to him the family has always been more important than
the regiment. H.C. Franklin, who took P.H. Creagh's place as our
Adjutant at the end of August, and was an old Regular soldier of the
Manchester Regiment, often said that the week's mail of a Territorial
battalion is as large as six months' mails for a unit of the old Army.
He told, too, a good story, which shows the perceptiveness of Indians.
He was standing near to some Indian muleteers when the Manchester
Territorial Brigade disembarked on Gallipoli. He heard them say in
Hindustani: "Here is another of the regiments of shopkeepers." One
pointed to Captain P.H. Creagh, our Adjutant and only Regular officer.
He said: "But he is a soldier." Another said of Staveacre: "A fine, big
man, but he also is of the shopkeepers."

The story of trench warfare during these months on Gallipoli is
undramatic. A record of their little episodes is almost trivial. Yet
this want of movement and initiative is true to life, and was the common
lot of the three or four British Divisions then responsible for
operations at Cape Helles. The campaign, in fact, came to a standstill
on the failure of the great offensive in August. The objects of the Army
were simply to hold the ground so hardly won