-revolver, water-bottle, ammunition, haversack,
field glasses, map case, Burberry and ground sheet. When we land we
will have about 5 lbs. of rations in addition.

Several of the officers on our ship visited the "Queen Elizabeth"
yesterday and returned with very alarming reports, this boat having
many times taken part in bombarding the Dardanelles Forts has a good
idea of what awaits us. They say the whole of Gallipoli swarms with
Turks, and the whole coast is covered with trenches and barbed wire
entanglements 6 feet high. They talk as if it meant absolute
annihilation of our small covering force of about 5000. The whole
remainder of the Expeditionary Force, I presume, will lie out at sea
till the coast is clear--should we succeed in clearing it, but it is
very evident every man I have spoken to has practically no hope of
ever returning. They expect our landing cutters to be well peppered
with shot and shell, and in our practice to-day we had to appear with
the straps of all our equipment outside our shoulder straps, and the
ends of our belts free, ready to whip open and get rid of it at a
moment's notice. I noticed that all our officers were unusually quiet
and serious last night, while they discussed the situation no doubt. I
went to bed at my usual hour and slept like a top.

The "Queen Elizabeth" went round to the Dardanelles to-day with the
C.O.'s of the regiments which are to take part in the covering
operations, looking for suitable places to disembark. We saw her
return to harbour about 6 p.m., and we hear she was fired on.

Whyte, Morris, and I anxiously watched a four-masted transport enter
the harbour this evening thinking it was possibly the "Marquette,"
but it proved to be A5, so that we have no chance of hearing from home
before to-morrow. We want our mail before we set off again, as the
next time will be for a long and indefinite period. All the transports
are named "B," "A," or "C"--British, Australian, or Colonial. Ours the
"Ausonia" is B4--no fewer than ninety transports lay in the harbour of
Alexandria ready to carry our troops to Lemnos.

_April 13th._--I have just returned from a trip ashore, the O.C. the
troops granting me leave on request to do so with twenty-four of our
men. We had three-quarters of an hour on land and had time to climb to
the top of a small hill. What struck me most on the more level ground
was the amount and stickiness of the mud, which was almost equal to
our horse line