"I felt as though I had been hit on the right jaw by the red hot spike fixed to the cowcatcher of a fast express and I promptly 'took the count.' When I found myself again, one of Ours was trying to gather my sagging cheek and lips into the naval shell bandage he had taken from me, and using the most wonderful language. He was hit in the head too, but we managed to get back the way we came. And, my word, the stretcher-bearers were busy.
"That day we lost Major Reid of A Squadron, who should theoretically have remained behind in the trench to direct operations, but preferred to lead his own men over the parapet. He went West with many other good men, but first accounted for a few with his revolver, I'm told. A great soldier and a gallant gentleman!
"No one had much chance in the charge. Believe me, you'd swear you'd met a swarm of locusts, the bullets were so thick and the hum of them so loud, and the very ground seemed to open under your feet. For the rest of it, it was like any other hustle. When you are in the thick of it you only think how you are going to get the other fellow. The waiting was the worst; the silence and the few handclasps exchanged in the gloom before dusk, when we stood in single file along that sap, and not a whisper was heard. Yes, that was eerie."
Such were the desperate means by which the men of Anzac sought to detain the Turkish army before their old lines, while the British force was being landed at Suvla Bay. These were demonstrations made with the object of attracting the attention of the enemy and of leading him to believe that the preparations that had obviously been made at Anzac were in anticipation of this frontal attack on the positions between Anzac and Maidos. In the meantime, as already explained, another body of the Anzacs had slipped silently out into the country, north of Walker's Ridge, with the object of attacking the heights of Sari Bair. We shall now see how it fared with them.
THE MIGHTY NEW ZEALANDERS