nothing unusual were happening. Familiarity may breed contempt in most
cases, but bullets singing about four feet above one's head is one of
the exceptions, and Heaven knows we had plenty of experience of
"overs" on the Peninsula. They are undoubtedly a fine incentive to
work however, and once on the ground the men dug like beavers--and
they _could_ dig--and by dawn at 4 A.M. we had a continuous though
somewhat narrow trench. The soil, for the most part, was clay, and it
was tough work digging, but once dug the trenches stood up well.

After a day or two we began to be sent up to the front line for
instruction, 30 men per squadron at a time, the remainder digging
trenches and going down singly to the beach for a bathe. That was the
one thing for which Gallipoli was perfect. The beach was rather far
away, perhaps two miles, but we were all glad of the exercise, and the
bathing was glorious--the water beautifully warm and so refreshing.

As regards the lie of the land and our positions there--coming up from
the beach at Suvla there were fully two miles of flat country before
you reached the foothills. The northern part of this plain was a
shallow lake dry in summer but with a few feet of brackish water in
winter called Salt Lake, and the southern part a few feet higher
stretched down to "Anzac," where spurs running down from Sari Bahr to
the sea terminate it abruptly. Our front line, generally speaking, was
just off the plain, a few hundred yards up the slopes of the
foothills, with any reserves there were lying in trenches on the
plain.

Imagining the whole Suvla plain and its surrounding hills to be a
horse-shoe, you might say the Turks held round three parts of the
shoe, leaving us with the two heels at Caracol Dagh on the north and