d I was absolutely soaked by the time
I reached the top of the cliff, scrambling through the Gurkha and Sikh
dugouts by the nearest cut possible, not much to their relish I
thought. Many of the Gurkhas were handling their knives, and one or
two sharpening them on stones. These knives of theirs are not so
sacred as some say they are, although I was once warned sharply not to
touch one I was to pick up beside its owner. I have often seen them
chopping wood and meat with these, hence the necessity for their
requiring sharpening this morning. Poor Gurkhas! later in the day some
of our men mistook them for Turks and mowed down seventy of them with
their machine-guns. In every battle we have had some such mistake, and
the Dublins in the afternoon had the same experience as the Gurkhas.

We were not many minutes in Aberdeen Gully when the Turks shrapnelled
the mule track very thoroughly, as they did in our last battle, and
wounded came in thick from here. Of course the Turks, by means of
spies, who are said to be numerous, knew the exact minute of the
attack, and were fully prepared to give us a hot time. The mule track
is merely an old trench widened and deepened, and when there is
fighting many troops pass along this, and the Turks guessed they could
get a rich harvest here.

From 9 to 11 every gun on the peninsula fired as fast as it could be
loaded--between 300 and 400 guns. We were in the thick of it, between
the two artillery lines, and the shells of both passed directly over
our heads. Orders to the artillery were that ammunition was not to be
spared.

At 11 the infantry assault on the first Turkish trench was to be made,
and the guns were then to lift and be trained on the third. All along
the first line seemed to fall easily, and many of our men rushed to
the second, some even taking a third, while a Scotch battalion even
took five. This sort of thing usually proves disastrous, as most of
our own big guns are out of sight of their objective, and fire
entirely by range, and in this case the guns were trained on the third
trench while this battalion rushed through to the fifth, with
calamitous results. This battalion--either Royal Scots, Scotch
Fusiliers, or K.O.S.B.'s I forget which--had lost all its officers,
but, with no one to lead them, they dashed on, greatly to the
admiration of all onlookers. Two Munster officers had finally to go
forward and recall them. Pushing forward at this rate, even apart from
the cha