Shells come over on east side of the beach from a four-gun Turkish battery, and big stuff too, about 6-inch.
7.30 a.m.
More arrive in middle of our camp on the west side of the battery. We take cover under a cliff. I, wanting to get down to Train office, go up a cliff and am just about to descend the steps when the shriek of one is heard, by which I could tell it is close to me. I fall flat into a hole on one side of the cliff, and it passes over the cliff and bursts on the beach, killing gunner sergeant-major. Ugh! how they shriek.
Heavy firing continued on left all night. We lost a trench, but regained it. A Turkish Padre is a prisoner on the beach to-day. He looks rather a dear old chap, with quite a benevolent expression.
6 p.m.
I go up to Brigade with Carver in the afternoon, leaving our horses at Pink Farm. My old mare knows Pink Farm well now. When I dismounted to-day and let go the reins, she walked over to the tree that I always tie her to, under cover of the farm, quite on her own.
At H.Q. bullets are zipping over more frequently than I have ever known them to do before. Waiting to see General Doran, who should I see strolling calmly across the country but my friend Dent, of the Inniskillings. The last time we had met was at a gramophone dance at some common friends’ home in Edgbaston. We have a chat about those days, and ask each other for news of the partners we used to dance with. All the time, “ping-ping,” bullets fly about, but as he does not seem to mind, I take my cue from him and try not to mind either. Besides, it would be rather nice to get a cushy one in the arm.
11 p.m.
We are being shelled by a battery from Kum Kale. This is the first time we have been shelled at night. They do not reach our side of the beach, and, as Phillips says he “can read the mind of the Turkish gunner” (he is always saying this, and I have great confidence in him), and that we are off the target, I go to sleep without anxiety.