Anzac on the south, and a line between these two points across the
plain. This plain was practically bare, but Caracol Dagh was thickly
covered with dwarf oak and scrub, and Anzac with a good undergrowth of
rhododendron, veronica, and other similar bushes. At Sulajik (the
centre of the horse-shoe), and immediately to the north of it, and
also round the villages in the Turkish lines, were numbers of fine
trees, but nowhere that we could see was there anything that could be
called a wood. As regards the soil, the gullies at Anzac on the spurs
of Sari Bahr were quite bewildering in their heaped up confusion,
partly rocky, but mainly a sort of red clay and very steep. In the
centre it was a yellower clay with patches of sand and bog, and on
Caracol Dagh it was all rock and stones, so that digging was
impossible, and all defences were built either with stones or
sandbags. The view looking back to the sea from almost any part of our
line was glorious. Hospital ships and men-of-war, and generally
monitors and troop-ships in the Bay, and on the horizon the peaks of
Imbros and Samothrace reflecting the glorious sunrises and sunsets of
the Levant.

In these surroundings we spent about a week before getting a turn in
the front line. We struck a reasonably quiet sector and fairly well
dug, but there were several details in which the trenches varied from
what we were accustomed to read about. The first and most noticeable
difference from the point of view of the inhabitants was the entire
absence of head cover. Even after we had been on the Peninsula nearly
three months all we had collected were one or two poles, a sheet of
corrugated iron (ear-marked as a roof for a signal station), and a few
yards of wire-netting. There was not a house or a building of course
in the country-side, and as our neighbours were as badly off as we
were, there was no scope for the enterprising.