would be impossible for any of the Ambulance to land before morning,
but heedless of this I set off alone over the barges and splashed
through the remaining few yards of water. Here most of those still
alive were wounded more or less severely, and I set to work on them,
removing many useless and harmful tourniquets for one thing, and
worked my way to the left towards the high rocks where the snipers
still were. All the wounded on this side I attended to, an officer
accompanying me all the time. I then went to the other side, and after
seeing to all in the sand my companion left me, and I next went to a
long, low rock which projected into the water for about 20 yards a
short way to the right of the "Clyde". Here the dead and wounded were
heaped together two and three deep, and it was among these I had my
hardest work. All had to be disentangled single-handed from their
uncomfortable positions, some lying with head and shoulders in the
tideless water, with broken legs in some cases dangling on a higher
level.

At the very point of this rock, which had been a favourite spot for
the boats to steer to, there was a solid mass of dead and wounded
mixed up together. The whole of these I saw to, although by this time
there was little I could do except lift and pull them into more
comfortable positions, but I was able to do something for every one of
them. My last piece of work was to look after six men who were
groaning in a boat stranded close to the point of the rock. Three lay
on each side with their legs inwards; a plank ran the whole length of
the middle of the boat, and along this as it rested on their legs, men
had been running during the landing. Getting on this plank some of
them howled in agony and beseeched me to get off. I then got into the
water and as I could do nothing more for them, my dressings being
finished some time before, I gave each a dose of morphia by the mouth.

I had just finished and was standing waist-deep in the water when the
Turkish counter-attack commenced with a volley from the distant end of
the fort, not over 300 yards off. The only person the Turk could see
was myself, the sandbank protecting the others from view, and at least
seven or eight bullets spluttered round me in the water. I had been
well warned that this counter-attack would take place at any moment,
but I never gave it a single thought. It was in anticipation of this
that the others clung to the shelter of the sandbank and I was