ck in the fourth, during the last rush forward.

"I could conceive of the impulse that carried one over those last two
hundred yards--but as an impulse of a lifetime; to most of my friends
this kind of thing was becoming their daily bread. The men I was with
were mostly a new draft. I could see they were afraid, but they were
brave. Word was passed along to advance to the next bit of cover.

"The bombardment had ceased. The rifle and Maxim fire ahead was
continuous, like hail on a corrugated roof of iron. The B's would soon
be in it. I listened eagerly for some intermission, but it did not
relax or recede, and I knew that the Turks must be holding on. The
bullets became thicker--an ironic whistle, a sucking noise, a gluck
like a snipe leaving mud, the squeal and rattle of shrapnel.

"I found the brigade headquarters. We had got into the Turkish
trenches, the general told me, but by that time we were sadly thin,
and we had been bombed out. At noon the rain came down, putting the
crown upon depression. All day and all night it poured, and one
thought of the wounded, shivering in the cold and mud, waiting for
help. At night they were brought in on slow, jolting transport carts."

The writer met a boy, the only officer of his regiment who had come
out of the trenches alive and unwounded, and who had a bullet through
his pocket and another through his helmet. He was in a dazed state of
wonder at finding himself still alive.

"It was a miracle that anyone had lived through that fire in the
attack and retreat, but the boy had been in the Turkish trenches and
held them for an hour and a quarter. Oddments of other regiments had
got through, two British and two Indian. I saw their dead being
carried out during the truce of the next day."

The boy officer's regiment had been the first to penetrate the enemy's
trenches. As he dropped into the trench a comrade next to him was
struck in the back of the head and dropped forward on his shoulder. "I
saw eight bayonets and rifles all pointing to me," said the boy
officer describing his experiences. "I saw the men's faces, and I was
desperately scared. I expected to go down in the next two yards. I
felt the lead in my stomach. I thought I was done for. I don't know
why they didn't fire. They must have been frightened by my sudden
appearance. I let off my revolver at them and it kicked up an awful
lot of dust."

The British troops that had charged the Turkish trenches were not
supp