at a standstill since the first week of the landing.

Rumours floated from one unit to another:

"We were going to make a great attack on the 28th"--always a fixed
date; "the Italians were landing troops to help the Australians at
Anzac"--every possible absurdity was noised abroad.

Hawk was on Chocolate Hill with our advanced dressing station. I was
on "C" Beach, Lala Baba, with the remainder of the ambulance. I had
lost all my officers by sickness and wounds, and I was now the last of
the original N.C.O.'s of "A" Section. Except for the swimming and my
own observations of tracks and birds and natural history generally,
this was a desperately uninteresting period.

Orders to pack up ready for a move came suddenly. It was now late in
September. The wet season was just beginning. The storm- clouds were
coming up over the hills in great masses of rolling banks, black and
forbidding. It grew colder at night, and a cold wind sprang up during
the day.

Every one was bustling about, packing the operating tent and
equipment, operating table, instruments, bottles, pans, stretchers,
"monkey- boxes," bandages, splints, cooking dixies, bully- beef
crates, biscuit tins--everything was being packed up and sorted out
ready for moving.

But where? No one knew. We were going to move . . . soon, very soon,
it was rumoured.