Wounded being placed on Hospital Ship.
Stretcher Bearers carrying Col. Cox.
The Engineers did wonderfully good work, and to a layman their ingenuity was most marked. Piers were made out of all sorts of things; for instance, a boat would be sunk and used as a buttress, then planks put over it for a wharf. They built a very fine pier which was afterwards named Watson's. Again, the "monkey" of a pile driver they erected was formed out of an unexploded shell from the Goeben. This warship, a German cruiser taken over by the Turks, was in the Sea of Marmora, and occasionally the Commander in a fit of German humour would fire a few shells over Gallipoli neck into the bay—a distance of about eight or nine miles. As soon as the Goeben began firing, one of our aeroplanes would go up, and shortly afterwards the Queen Elizabeth could be seen taking up a position on our side of the Peninsula, and loosing off. Whether she hit the Goeben or not we never heard. It was Mafeesh.
The Engineers also made miles upon miles of roads and, furthermore, created the nucleus of a water storage. A number of large tanks from Egypt were placed high up on "Pluggey's," whence the water was reticulated into the far distant gullies.
One night in May the Turks made a fierce attack on us, apparently determined to carry out their oft-repeated threat of driving us into the sea. The shells just rained down over our gully, lighting up the dug-outs with each explosion. It was like Hell let loose. Word came up from the beach station that they were full of casualties and on getting down there one found that the situation had not been over-estimated. The whole beach was filled with stretchers, the only light being that from bursting shells. We worked hard all night operating and dressing, and when one had time to think, one's thoughts generally took the shape of wondering how the men were keeping the Turks off. It was useless to be sentimental, although many of my friends were amongst those injured; the work just had to be done in the best way possible.
One night a strong wind got up, just like our "Southerly Busters," and in the middle of it all firing began on our left. I heard that the Turks nearly got into the trenches, but they were beaten off and rolled right round the position—passed on, as it were, from battalion to battalion.
It was very interesting to watch the warships bombarding Turkish positions. One ship, attacking Achi Baba, used to fire her broadside, and on the skyline six clouds would appear at regular intervals, for all the world like windmills. On another occasion I watched two ships bombarding the same hill a whole afternoon. One would think there was not a square yard left untouched, and each shot seemed to lift half the hill. Twenty minutes after they had ceased firing, a battery of guns came out from somewhere and fired in their turn. They must have been in a tunnel to have escaped that inferno. One day we were up on "Pluggey's" while our beach was being shelled; at last the stack of ammunition caught fire and was blazing fiercely until some of the men got buckets and quenched the fire with sea water most courageously. Later a shell landed among a lot of dug-outs. There was quietness for a bit; then one man began scraping at the disturbed earth, then another; finally about six of them were shovelling earth away; at last a man appeared with his birthday suit for his only attire. He ran like a hare for the next gully, amid the yells of laughter of all who witnessed the occurrence. I think he had been swimming, and being disturbed by "Beachy," had run for a dug-out only to be buried by the shell.