Having delivered himself of this satisfying philosophy, he resumed his survey of the ground in front.
About ten yards outside the block house we were holding, the Turks had, under cover of darkness, almost completed a sap, with the object of surrounding the block house. A detachment of the Dublins with three or four bomb throwers sapped out to the left of the sap the enemy was digging, after a short but exciting engagement, bombed them out of it, and took the sap at the point of the bayonet. They found it occupied by only two Turks, who surrendered. The rest were able to get back to their own trench. We cut the corner off this sap, rounded it off to surround our block house, and occupied it. It brought us to within fifty yards of the enemy firing line. We could hear them talking at night; and in the daytime we could see them walking about their trenches. At this point, they had in their lines a number of animals, chiefly dogs. In addition, they had a brass band that played tuneless, wailing music nearly every night, to the accompaniment of the howling and barking of dogs. Some of the men claimed that the dogs were trained animals who carried food to snipers and who were taught to find the Turkish wounded. This may have been true; but I have always believed that their chief use was to cover the noise of secret operations. This seems likely, for they were able to get their sap almost finished without our hearing them.
The block house we held stood just in the center of the line that the Fifth Norfolks had charged into early in August, and from which not one man had emerged. The second or third day we occupied it, a detachment of engineers was sent in to make loopholes and prepare it for a stubborn defense. In the wall on the left they made a large loophole. The sentry posted there the first morning saw about twenty feet away the body of a British soldier, partly buried. Two volunteers to bury the body were asked for. Half a dozen offered, although it was broad daylight and the place the body lay in offered no protection.
Before any one could be selected, Art Pratt and young Hayes made the decision by jumping up, taking their picks and shovels, and vaulting over the wall of the block house. They walked out to where the body lay. It had been torn in pieces by a shell the previous afternoon. At first a few bullets tore up little spurts of ground near the two men, but as soon as they reached the body, this stopped. The Turks never fired on burial parties; and men on the Peninsula, wounded by snipers, tell strange stories of dark-skinned visitors who crept up to them after dark, bound up their wounds, gave them water, and helped them to within shouting distance of their own lines, where at daylight the next morning their comrades found them. Once one of our batteries was very near a dressing station when a stray shell, fired at the battery, hit the dressing station. The Turkish observer heliographed over and apologized. That is why we respected the Turk. When we tried to shoot him, he chuckled to himself and sniped us from trees and dugouts; and when we reviled him and threw tins of apricot jam at him, he gave thanks to Allah, and ate the jam. The empty tins he filled with powder and returned to us in the shape of bombs. Only once did he really lose his temper. That was when under his very eyes we deliberately undressed on his beach and disported ourselves in the Ægean Sea. Then he sent over shells that shrieked at us to get out of his ocean. But in his angriest moments he respected the Red Cross and never ill treated our wounded. One chap, an Englishman, was wounded in the head just as he reached the Turkish trench during a charge. The bullet went in the side of his head, ruining both his eyes. He was captured as he toppled over into the trench, was taken to Constantinople, well treated in hospital there, and returned in the first batch of exchanged prisoners. When I met him in Egypt, he had nothing but kind words for the Turks. When the enemy saw the object of the little expedition, they allowed Art and Hayes to proceed unmolested. We watched them dig a grave beside the corpse; and when they had finished, with a shovel they turned the body into it. Before doing it, they searched the man for personal papers and took off his identification disk. These bore the name, "Sergeant Golder, Fifth Norfolk Regiment." That was in the last part of October; and since August 10th not a word had been heard of the missing Norfolk regiment. To this day, the whole affair remains a mystery. The regiment disappeared as if the ground had swallowed them up. On the King's Sandringham estate, families are still hoping against hope that there may sometime come word that the men are prisoners in Turkey. Neutral consuls in Constantinople have been appealed to, and have taken the matter up with the Turkish Government. The most searching inquiries have elicited nothing new. The answer has always been the same. The Turkish authorities know no more about it than the English. Two hundred and fifty men were given the order to charge into a wood. The only sign that they ever did so, is the little wooden cross that reads