One evening, the 25th of August, bush-fires broke out on the right of
Chocolate Hill.

The shells from the Turks set light to the dried sage, and thistle and
thorn, and soon the whole place was blazing. It was a fearful sight.
Many wounded tried to crawl away, dragging their broken arms and legs
out of the burning bushes and were cremated alive.

It was impossible to rescue them. Boxes of ammunition caught fire and
exploded with terrific noise in thick bunches of murky smoke. A
bombing section tried to throw off their equipment before the
explosives burst, but many were blown to pieces by their own bombs.
Puffs of white smoke rose up in little clouds and floated slowly
across the Salt Lake.

The flames ran along the ridges in long lapping lines with a canopy of
blue and gray smoke. We could hear the crackle of the burning
thickets, and the sharp "bang!" of bullets. The sand round Suvla Bay
hid thousands of bullets and ammunition pouches, some flung away by
wounded men, some belonging to the dead. As the bush-fires licked from
the lower slopes of the Sari Bair towards Chocolate Hill this lost
ammunition exploded, and it sounded like erratic rifle-fire. The fires
glowed and spluttered all night, and went on smoking in the morning. I
had to go up to Chocolate Hill about some sand-bags for our hospital
dug-outs next day, and on the way up I noticed a human pelvis and a
chunk of charred human vertebrae under a scorched and charcoaled
thorn-bush.

Hawk and I kept a very good look-out every day. We noted the arrival