May 5.—Up to sap again at 3 a.m., and sat rifle in hand on a cartridge-box for four solid (and weary) hours keeping guard. Turks only a few yards off. If one had showed his nose over the parapet I doubt if I could have raised the rifle to my shoulder; however, the working party didn't know that. Nothing very lively happened. Sap head ran into a dead Turk, who was so tied up in the scrub that he couldn't be shoved to one side except at great risk. Only one thing to do: we sapped through him. It wasn't the nicest job in the world, seeing the time he'd lain there. Came back to poor breakfast. Could have done with a "go" of rum. Didn't get any.
In the afternoon bossed up a whole company of London infantrymen at road-making. There is plenty of variety in the engineering line I find. My company certainly didn't know how to go about the job they had taken in hand, and they had never even heard of a corduroy road, while their ideas on the question of drainage would have shocked Noah. Their officers thought they knew all there was to know, but really didn't know enough to know how little they did know. I had a slight difference of opinion with those officers. I got my own way.
The country here is rather pretty—deep gullies and cañons with high hills clothed with dwarf oak (we called it holly) and firs; in the gullies one runs across the arbutus, the flowering thorn, a kind of laurel, and a wood that resembles the New Zealand karaka. Wild flowers bloom in profusion; my dug-out is gay with a little pink rambler rose that threatens to engulf it in its tendrils. The growth is rapid. We have evidently struck the right time of year for visiting Gallipoli. In a way the Peninsula reminds me of parts of the North Island of New Zealand.
In the way of bird and animal life there are larks, doves, pigeons, hawks, turkeys, cuckoos, and tortoises. The latter animals caused our sentries many anxious moments. I shouldn't care to calculate how many tortoises were "halted," nor how many were shot at. They were big fellows as tortoises go, and when a chap got a squint of one mooching along the sky-line in the moonlight, it was all the odds to a tin-tack he let go at it.
In the insect line we could count quite a tidy little collection. We had flies by the hundred billion. They were everywhere, from the heaps of dead to the cook's pots. Put jam on a biscuit and it was always a sprint to your mouth between you and the flies, the event usually ending in a dead heat. There were other insects not quite so plentiful as the flies, but even fonder of our company—at least, they stuck close to us; they're not usually named before ladies, except in the pulpit.
We had snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and big hairy tarantula spiders; and when they elected to drop into the trenches things got fairly lively. We liked them just about as much as they liked us. A state of war existed between us: we took no prisoners.
——AND (a very big "and") there is gold on the Gallipoli Peninsula. There is. It's there—for I myself panned off the dirt and found the colour! I know the spot, and some day, perhaps, I'll have a try for the big seam. I have a fairly good idea—— But that's another tale.
There are other things in our trenches that we don't care overmuch to have as company. Maggots—maggots crawling in battalions about a chap's feet and dropping from the sides of the trench down his neck. Maggots from the dead! You can't sit down hardly without flattening a dozen or two out. It's bad for one's uniform. Something will have to be done, or we'll all be down with disease. It's a good job we were all inoculated against enteric, anyway. The smell is worse than a glue factory. We have dead Turks right on our very parapets. Only this morning a bullet pitched into one lying close handy, and the putrid matter (of the consistency of porridge) was "spattered" right over us. They say you can get used to anything. Well, maybe so. But it's hard to get used to that. No news yet, and no way of sending any.
Later.—First part of a mail arrived at last. Two letters for me. Am going to try to get letters sent off; they will be strictly censored, of course. The sergeant of my section killed to-day—a really nice fellow and a general favourite. I'll soon have no chums left at all. Enemy is now using explosive bullets. I have seen their effects.
Driven out of sap every time we entered it by bombs. One burst within three feet of me without doing any harm. Firing going on as usual. Managed to get a change of socks to-day. Needed them. Rumoured that the British or the Turks have presented an ultimatum, calling on one or other to surrender within twenty-four hours—no one seems to know which. Also that the French have taken a big fort at the Narrows. Air full of rumours—and projectiles. Big guns almost splitting the drum of my ear as I write. Very heavy Maxim and rifle fire this evening. Quite sick of it all; the Turks take a lot of beating. Weather beautiful; sea calm and of an azure blue colour. Rum issued to-night. Big event. Things looked brighter afterwards.