no place were they far enough to make it a
record-breaking aerial flight for a fly. Perhaps it was because they
were all Turkish-bred that the flies did us so much harm, for they
certainly accounted for more deaths than the shells or bullets.
Dysentery was rife all the time and there were times when not one man
was well. If the doctors had known enough they would have put a
barrage of disinfectant in front of our trenches. We put up sandbags
to stop the bullets, but no one had devised a method to stop those
winged emissaries of death. Those who died from lead-poisoning were
but a score to the hundreds who died of fly-poisoning.

This is but a little of what holding on meant to that little force.
The Turk was not only a brave, but a "wily" fighter--snipers were
always giving trouble, and one never knew from which direction the next
shot was coming. Men with "nerves" declared that our line must be full
of spies--sometimes a shot would come through the door of a dugout
facing out to sea. These snipers were certainly brave fellows--some
were found covered with leaves--one was found in a cleft in the rock
where he must have been lowered by his comrades and he could not get
out without their help. In the early days some of the Turkish officers
who could talk English even took the extreme risk of mixing among the
troops and passing false orders. One of these spies was only
discovered through misuse of a well-known Australian slang-word. No
one in the Australian army but knows the meaning of "dinkum." Its
meaning is something the same as the American "on the level!" and is
probably the commonest word in the Australian soldier's vocabulary. He
will ask: "Is that dinkum news?" State that, "He's a dinkum fellow!"
and so on. Well, one day a man in an Australian officer's uniform
spoke to some officers in a certain sector of trench, and said he
brought a message from headquarters. He was getting a lot of
information and seemed to know several officers' names, but he bungled
over one of them, and on the officer he was speaking to inquiring, "Is
that dinkum?" he answered: "Yes, _that's_ his name!" There was no
further investigation, he was shot dead on the spot. The officer who
did it may have been hasty, but there can be no doubt that justice was
done, for he must have been either a Turk or a German and had already
found out too much.

CHAPTER XV

THE EVACUATION

Without warning, winter came down upon us.