I went without a guide round Anzac, because the paths were well worn when I trod them, though there were many twisted roads, but all leading upwards to the trenches winding round the edge of the ridge. One could not miss one's way very well by keeping on the path that led southward from the heart of Anzac round to the first point—Hell Spit (beyond, a machine gun played and chased any who approached, unless the Turks happened to be off duty, as they sometimes were), and there you found the broad, open mouth of the gully. Usually a party of men were coming up from bathing. They were sun-burned right down to their waists (for they never wore shirts if they could possibly avoid it, and looked more like Turks than the Turks themselves), and you found them squatting in a sap, the mouth of which gaped on to the beach, secure behind the angle of a hill. By their side were large Egyptian water-tins. The "coves" up above in the trenches were drinking this ration of water for their evening meal, but there was always time to have a chat with a comrade or mate from the northern side of Anzac, or with men who lived in the heart of the position. For the troops knew only their own section of the line, and had seen nothing of famed posts and positions captured and held. In fact, it was a sort of mutual understanding that these fatigue parties always stopped for the purpose of swapping stories about adventures with Turks.
"Had much fighting, Fred, down your way?" one would drawl.
"Bit of an attack, but the blighters would not face the —— bayonet."
"Was out doing a bit of scouting the other night from Russell Top," spoke another fine-featured man, "and only for a thunderstorm would have captured a bit of a ridge, but a blooming interpreter chap got the shivers, and we just got back without being nabbed."
It would make a book in itself to record all the conversations one dropped amongst, of scraps of fighting, of one section of the line and another. The men flattened themselves against the side of the sap to let a stretcher case pass, always asking, if the wounded man showed any signs of life, about the wound and his regiment. About July, in the saps one met men carrying large quantities of sheet-iron and beams of wood to form the terraces up along the sides of the hills. One sheet of iron could make a dugout magnificent, even luxurious; two was a home fit for a general. This sap wound backwards and forwards up the gully, just giving glimpses of the tops of the ridge, over which bullets came whizzing and embedding themselves against the hillside. That was the reason of the sap. The little graveyard you passed was full of these spent bullets: shells whined away over it to the beach.
SHRAPNEL GULLY, LOOKING NORTH INTO MONASH GULLY FROM NEAR THE JUNCTION OF WANLISS GULLY.
The white cross in the centre of the hills represents the small section of Turkish trenches on the Nek that overlooked the Gully. On the left is Russell Top.