ector of the area, where the French had held
the line ever since their move from Kum Kale to the Peninsula. We walked
to beautiful Morto Bay, with its graceful curve from the headland called
De Tott's Battery. The ruins on this point, carried by the South Wales
Borderers on the 25th April, stood out clear-cut against the bright blue
of the Dardanelles and the fainter grey of the Asiatic coast beyond. We
went on past French and Senegalese dug-outs to Sedd-el-Bahr, a village
and fort wrecked by our naval guns in the first days of the campaign.
The country was open and dotted with the remains of vineyards. North of
Sedd-el-Bahr was the well-tended French graveyard, more prettily kept
than our own cemetery above Lancashire Landing. Here sleep many hundred
soldiers, "morts sur le champs d'honneur," their _kepis_ on the crosses,
and their graves adorned by flowers. The Jews and Senegalese had their
own separate plots.

Sedd-el-Bahr appeared to be but a collection of outer walls and broken
pillars, posts and fountains, some of archaic design. On the beach
below, the _River Clyde_ recalled the glory of the landing of the
Dublins, Hampshires and Munsters. We struggled back to our bivouac in
the teeth of a dusty, warm wind, to be inoculated with _emetine_ and to
rest by the white coast road, while we watched our monitors riding
between Cape Helles and Imbros, and landing shells in the Turkish
trenches on the slopes of Achi Baba. On such an occasion Ross Bain would
arrive from marketing among the Greeks on Tenedos with some greatly
valued potatoes, and then all our troubles would be forgotten.

When rain came, the joy of living was hard to attain. During all our
time on Gallipoli I remember but one or two occasions when we were
fortunate enough to secure timber or some corrugated iron to roof our
dug-outs. Normally we had only our mackintosh sheets. Rain turned the
thick dust to a brown morass, and the little mule carts struggling past
the swampy curve of Geoghegan's Bluff could hardly clamber up the Gully
Ravine. It was choked with mud.

Then the sun would come out and the flies returned in their myriads to
plague us. They blackened every jam-pot and clustered thickly round the
mouths and eyes of sleeping soldiers. The trenches became dry and dusty.
Detached legs or feet or arms of the dead would protrude from the
parapet, as the soil around them fell away. Smells became all-pervading.
We would seek refuge in the dug-outs, that