them.

They were stretcher-bearers--Australian stretcher-bearers. The two pair
on the bank already had their load, and the others were lifting theirs
up thither. They were just setting out to carry their burden overland on
a track which led straight to the barrage which had turned us back.

I learned more about Australian stretcher-bearers that morning than I
had known since the first week in Gallipoli. I cursed my fate that I was
not permitted to have a camera there, to prove to Australians that these
things are true. As luck would have it, the next time I saw that same
scene the British official photographer was beside me. We saw the smoke
of a barrage on the skyline. And coming straight from it were two
little parties each headed by a flag.

We hurried to the place--and there it is on record, in the photograph
for every man to see some day just as we saw it, the little party coming
down the open with the angry shells behind them.

I asked those stretcher-bearers as I looked up at the shell-bursts how
the Germans treated them.

"They don't snipe us so long as we have this flag," one of them said.
"You see, we started it by not firing on theirs when they came out to
their wounded. Of course, we can't help the artillery," he added,
looking over his shoulder at the place from which he had come, where a
line of black shell-bursts was fringing the hill. "That's not meant for
us."

That understanding, if you can maintain it honourably and trust the