"No food . . . we chewed grass . . . sucked dead grass to get some
spittle . . . an' sometimes we tried to eat grass to fill up a bit . .
. no food . . . no water . . ."

They were complete wrecks. They couldn't keep their limbs still. They
trembled and shook as they lay there.

Their ribs were standing out like skeletons, and their stomachs had
sunken in. They were black with sunburn, and filthily dirty.

Gradually they got better. The glare of insanity became less obvious,
but a certain haunted look never left them. They were broken men.
Months afterwards they mumbled to themselves in the night-time.

Nolan, one of the seafaring men of my section who was with the lost
squads, also returned, but he had not suffered so badly, or at any
rate he had been able to stand the strain better.

It was about this time that we began to realise that the new landing
had been a failure. It was becoming a stale-mate. It was like a clock
with its hands stuck. The whole thing went ticking on every day, but
there was no progress--nothing gained. And while we waited there the
Turks brought up heavy guns and fresh troops on the hills. They
consolidated their positions in a great semicircle all round us--and
we just held the bay and the Salt Lake and the Kapanja Sirt.

So all this seemed sheer waste. Thousands of lives wasted--thousands
of armless and legless cripples sent back--for nothing. The troops
soon realised that it was now hopeless. You can't "kid" a great body
of men for long. It became utterly sickening--the inactivity--the