with pink and crimson pips--the colour of a Mediterranean sunset.

One day ashore on this accursed island and the diarrhoea set in. I
never saw men suffer such awful stomach-pains before. The continual
eating of melons to allay the blistering thirst helped the disease.
Many men slept close to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and fro all
night long. The sun blazed, and the flies in thousands of millions
swarmed and irritated from early morning till sundown.

At night it was cold. The stars burned white-hot--a calm, fierce
glitter.

Hawk and I "kipped down" (slept) together on a sandy stretch
overlooking the bay. We could see the green-and-red electric lights of
the hospital ships waiting in the harbour--for us, perhaps . . .

The "graft" (work) was fearful. All day long we were at it: hauling up
our equipment from the beach where it had been dumped ashore. Medical
panniers, operating marquee, tents and tent-poles, cook-house dixies,
picks and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a hundred-and-one
articles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: all
this had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a
mile away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and
buzzed and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming
down your face. How long should we be here? When were we going into
action? . . . The suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased:
everyone went down with it. Some got the ague shivers and some a touch
of dysentery.

We became gloomy and bodily sick. We wanted to get into it--into