became a tangled spider's web of wires and cross wires. They added
wires and branch wires every day, and stuck them up on thin poles.
Here you could see the Engineers in shirt and shorts trying to find a
disconnection, or carrying a huge reel of wire. Wooden shanties sprang
up where dug-outs had been a day or so before. Piers began to crawl
out into the bay, adding a leg and trestle and pontoon every hour.
Near Kangaroo Beach was the camp of the Indians, and here you could
see the dusky ones praying on prayer mats and cooking rice and
"chupatties" (sort of oatcake-pancakes).

Here they were laying a light rail from the beach up with trucks for
carrying shells and parts of big guns.

Here was the field post-office with sacks and sacks of letters and
parcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair of
socks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box--
sometimes nothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty
shell--the contents having disappeared. What happened to all the
parcels which never got to the Dardanelles no one knows, but those
which did arrive were rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels containing
cigarettes had a way of not getting delivered, and cakes and sweets
often fell out mysteriously on the way from England.




CHAPTER XVI


THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS