Monday, June 7, 1915. Kaba Tepé. This morning the land was sweet as Eden and there was the calm of the first creation. H. has been made a new Uriah the Hittite, but not because of Mrs. H. Last night I was invaded by mice. There is tremendous shelling going on now. This afternoon S. B., Onslow and I climbed a hill and had a beautiful view. Every one is rather ill and feverish. I have no news about Jack. The Intelligence office has been moved to a higher and safer place. Pirie Gordon, poor chap, has gone sick a long time ago. I rather liked the stuffy old place, which was called “The Mountain Path to the Jackal’s Cave.”
The attack last night failed, but the drone of the rifles went on unceasingly, like the drone of a dry waterfall. We shall not get to Constantinople unless the flat-faced Bulgars come in.
Yesterday I lunched with Temperley at the H.Q. of Monash Valley. Times have changed: it’s fairly safe going there through a long sap they have dug, and the noise is less bad.
Colonel —— had seen a lot of the Crown Prince in India, and said he was a very good fellow. Dined with Woods, Dix, S. B. and Edwards. Lots of champagne for once; a very good dinner.
I went to No. 2 Outpost with the General. There is a sap all the way now. Only one sniper the whole way. The Turkish birds were singing beautifully as we went. There was also a Turkish snake, which I believed was quite harmless, but Tahu killed it. The men are getting pretty tired. They are not as resigned as their ten thousand brother-monks over the way at Mount Athos.
Friday, June 11, 1915. Kaba Tepé. The Australians and New Zealanders have given up wearing clothes. They lie about and bathe and become darker than Indians. The General objects to this. “I suppose,” he says, “we shall have our servants waiting on us like that.” The flies are very bad, so are the mice, and so is the shelling....
Sunday, June 13, 1915. Kaba Tepé. A lot of mules and several men hit yesterday. Last night, S. B. and I were on the beach, when a man on a stretcher went by, groaning rhythmically. I thought he had been shot through the brain. Later on I went into the hospital to find a wounded Turk, and found that this man had never been hit at all. He had been doing very good work till a shell exploded near him and gave him a shock. Then he went on imitating a machine-gun. Some men in a sap up at Quinn’s have been going off their heads.
Awful accounts of Mudros: flies, heat, sand, no water, typhoid. To-day are the Greek elections.
Am dining with H. Woods. “The beach” now says that Ot has been poisoned by the Greek guides, whom he illtreats and uses as cooks. I shouldn’t wonder. The shelling is bad. I am going to make a new dugout to get away from the flies and mice. The Turkish prisoners will do this. I pay them a small sum.
Tuesday, June 15, 1915. Kaba Tepé. Colonel Chauvel[14] has pleurisy, Colonel Johnston[15] enteric. The sea’s high and the Navy depressed.... One man and two mules killed in our gully this morning; the body of one mule blown about 50 yards both ways.