ed and they shelled--every day. Snipers sniped and men
got killed; but there was no further advance. Things had remained at a
standstill since the first week of the landing.

Rumours floated from one unit to another:

"We were going to make a great attack on the 28th"--always a fixed
date; "the Italians were landing troops to help the Australians at
Anzac"--every possible absurdity was noised abroad.

Hawk was on Chocolate Hill with our advanced dressing station. I was on
"C" Beach, Lala Baba, with the remainder of the ambulance. I had lost
all my officers by sickness and wounds, and I was now the last of the
original N.C.O.'s of "A" Section. Except for the swimming and my own
observations of tracks and birds and natural history generally, this was
a desperately uninteresting period.

Orders to pack up ready for a move came suddenly. It was now late in
September. The wet season was just beginning. The storm-clouds were
coming up over the hills in great masses of rolling banks, black and
forbidding. It grew colder at night, and a cold wind sprang up during
the day.

Every one was bustling about, packing the operating tent and equipment,
operating table, instruments, bottles, pans, stretchers, "monkey-boxes,"
bandages, splints, cooking dixies, bully-beef crates, biscuit
tins--everything was being packed up and sorted out ready for moving.

But where? No one knew. We were going to move... soon, very soon, it was
rumoured.

Within every mind a small voice asked--"Blighty?" And then came another
whiff of rumour: "The Xth Division are going--England perhaps!"

But it was too good to believe. Every one wanted to believe it... each
man in his inmost soul hoped it might be true... but it couldn't be
England... and yet it might!

One night the Indian Pack-mule Corps came trailing down with their
little two-wheeled, two-muled carts and transported all our medical
panniers away into the gloom, and they went towards Lala Baba. It was a
good sign.

Everything was gone now except our own packs and kit, and we had orders
to "stand by" for the command to "Fall in."

We lay about in the sand waiting--and wondering. At last towards the
last minutes of midnight we got the orders to "Fall in." The N.C.O.'s
called the "Roll," "numbered off" their sections and reported "All
present and correct, sir!"

In a long straggling column we marched from our last encampment towards
Lala Baba. The night was very dark and the sand gave und