to read; the _Sentry_ writers were exceptional. When I once came upon
a man reading the _Golden Treasury_, in Hardship Avenue, I knew he could
not be a Manchester man. He was not. He came from the Isle of Man, and
had joined our reserves at Southport. I found about half-a-dozen men
who could enjoy _The Times_ broadsheets. I am afraid _John Bull_ was
much more popular.

It was pleasant indeed to stroll along the narrow trenches and see how
staunchly the men forgot their privations. Towards evening little
parties would go, heavy-laden, into long forward saps that the engineers
had thrown forward from Inniskilling Inch, to pass the night in cuttings
called "T-heads," which were ultimately to be connected together and
form a new trench closer to the enemy. They looked out from these lonely
places in the midst of No Man's Land upon scattered heaps of corpses,
and in their front upon the well-built Turkish trenches, substantially
wired in and full of cleverly disguised loopholes. Two sentries were
placed in each "T-head." The man on watch was exposed to oblique fire
from all directions, as both British and Turkish lines curved to right
and left, while the constant sound of Turkish picks at work suggested
the proximity of mines. The sap that ran back to the fire trench was
very narrow, and ended in a low tunnel under our parapet. It was
therefore hard to bring wounded in from the "T-head." I remember one
poor fellow in A Company called Renshaw being badly wounded in the head
one night, and being dragged back through the tunnel with infinite
difficulty.

The Turks were quick to pick up targets. One morning at our bivouac on
Geoghegan's Bluff, we noticed half-a-dozen mules stray from Gully Ravine
to the moor on the summit of its southerly side, perhaps a thousand
yards from the enemy's front line. We saw them shot, one by one, within
a minute. As the Turks enjoyed the possession of higher ground
everywhere from first to last, their power of observation was
necessarily greater than ours, and no corner of Cape Helles was exempt
from shell fire. It pursued us even in our bathing places.

The course of life on Gallipoli was, however, so monotonous that men
became callous to all dangers. They carried on the long day's routine
and the numberless little jobs included in the term "trench duties," as
if nothing else mattered. Such tasks are familiar to-day to so many
millions of Europeans that they need no description. Gas masks,
spri