with the stretcher-bearers when we had a terrible
time--hard work up to 1 a.m. and most of the time to the music of
bullets about our ears. And amidst all the din and roar of battle a
nightingale sang the whole day and still more sweetly all through the
next night, perched in a clump of trees we had repeatedly to pass on
the way to the Regimental Aid Posts of the Lancs. and Plymouth and
Drake Battalions--such a contrast of sounds!

_Later._--It is now 7.30 p.m. and the sun has gone down in a red glow
behind the rugged mountains of Imbros as viewed from the entrance of
my dugout. It has been a glorious day, uncomfortably warm, but calm
and without dust, which has been disagreeable for a day or two. I have
just had a bathe in the Aegean, which I was much in need of, this
being the first time I have taken off my clothes since I left Lemnos.
Walking along the beach I picked up a photograph of a chubby baby, the
darling of some one no doubt. He will miss this link with home.

The Turks have had little stomach for fighting to-day. Sniping has
gone on, of course, and occasionally a regular fusillade, but to us
the day on the whole has been peaceful. From 5 a.m. we have been very
busy among the Australian wounded, these being the principal sufferers
in yesterday's fight, owing, it is said, to their charging with the
bayonet at an inopportune moment. Many of their senior officers passed
through our hands, and their men, fine, big fellows, in large numbers.

Thomson and I were in charge of our dressing station at the "Five
Towers" from 9 a.m. yesterday till noon to-day, and were busy the
whole time, except from about 1 to 5 a.m. to-day, when we lowered
ourselves into a trench and tried to sleep.

Last night I started to go as far out as possible with five stretcher
squads, but in the dark it is difficult to move, nearly every spot is
taken up by men, horses, and transport, and you are continually
challenged by sentries. After showing our men across a brook with a
dark lantern, some others crossing with stretchers asked for a light,
and as soon as I threw a flash on the water a bullet whistled past me
from a sniper who must have penetrated our front line. I heard the
whistle of many a bullet at close quarters yesterday, and to-day big
shells have fallen on all the four sides of our dressing station,
coming from Achi Baba.

Yesterday when the battle raged at its worst a telegram was handed to
me, and read: "Good luck and fonde