After being under fire of such awful shells one laughs at mild shrapnel.
Getting very hot, but perfect weather.
Saw Laird for a few minutes and had a chat with him.
Not much time for writing to-day. Go up to Laird’s “bivvy” and have a long talk with him over old times. He landed on that first Sunday on “S” Beach, and though in the Engineers, had the experience of taking part in three bayonet charges. He was in a neat little dugout when I went up, and was busy looking for a scorpion. I helped him look for it, and it seemed so strange that after all these years we should meet on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and before sitting down to talk of old times should be looking for a scorpion that had got into his dugout.
Scorpions and snakes about three feet long are becoming more numerous here, but I believe they are harmless, except in self-defence.
May 15th.
All was quiet on the front last night, but to-day there has been one long artillery duel.
I go up to Brigade H.Q. this afternoon, and go round by the road through Sed-el-Bahr this time, because “I don’t like them shells; run as you may, you can’t get away from them.” On the way I passed Ashmead Bartlett riding with a Naval officer. The latter came and had tea with us later, and said he was on the Implacable, and Ashmead Bartlett was “bivvying” there as well. He is a correspondent for several papers.
Several battleships which were moored at the entrance move off at nightfall now, after that feat by the Turkish destroyer which sank the Goliath.
There is to be a general attack to-morrow night, Sunday. Some of the Tommies do not like attacking at night; they say, “Let us get them in the open, by day.”