"Damn them and their snipers!" said a young bush-man, and began again his observation from another point. Up and down and through a long tunnel and we came back again to the rear of the main hill. When I saw where I had walked, set out on a map, it seemed very short after the miles of winding trenches that disappeared in all directions over and through the hill. Yet the troopers were still digging. Their troubles!
Brigadier-General Maclagan had a birthday—or he said it was about time he had—one day when I came in, and he celebrated it by cutting a new cake which his Brigade-Major, Major Ross, had obtained through the post.
"Luxury," began the Brigadier, with his mouth full of currants, "is only a matter of comparison. Look at my couch and my pigeon-holes, my secret earthen safes, and—bring another pannikin of tea."
Yes, it was comparison. "Ross, you will show the trenches—fine fellow, Ross," and the Brigadier cut another piece of cake.
Other officers dropped in and the cake slowly vanished. I wondered what Ross thought. "No use," he said to me later. "Better eat it now. Might not be here to eat it to-night. What about these trenches, now? You have a periscope? Right." As we started I felt his position was like that of the officer who, having received a hamper with some fine old whisky, found himself suddenly grown popular and received a great many visitors in one night. News spread quickly at Anzac!
It was the middle section of the right of the line that I was visiting, adjacent to the Light Horse position, just described. The Turks started shelling before we had fairly started, and I watched the shells bursting on Shell Green—harmlessly enough, but very thick. The Brigade-Major left word at the telephone switchboard where he was going, and, choosing one of three ways, dived into a sap on the hillside that was reached by a flight of steps. One had not gone far to be struck by the scrupulous cleanliness of this underground line. No tins, papers, or broken earthworks: everything spick and span. I was being told how the wheatfield had been taken at the time just as we were passing across it—through a sap and working up under cover on to the outer ridge. That day I seemed to do nothing else but grip hard brown hands and meet new faces. That splendid Staff officer had a word for all his men.
"Wish the beggars would only attack. We have everything nicely prepared for them," he began to explain as we walked through a tunnel and halted on the side of a hill. We stood behind some bushes in a machine-gun pit. "Never been fired," said the officer, and then smiled in a curious way. "Got four more all along the top of the gully in two tiers. We expect—that is our hope—the Turks will come up here to try and cut off that hill which we have taken. Let 'em."
It was the first time I had seen a real trap. God help any foe that entered that valley!
Did I want to see all the position? I did. It took two hours—two of the shortest, most amazing hours I spent at Anzac.
"We are going now to see the gallery trenches. Always believe in making things roomy below ground," the Major explained, "so that the men do not get any suggestion of being cramped." So we entered a fine, high, and broad gallery, lit by the holes that were opened at intervals along it and used as firing-steps. My guide chuckled as he came to a point where it was rather dark. He stopped before more manholes filled with barbed wire. On the firing-step a soldier was carefully handling his tin of stew. This was a mantrap—a small hole and a thin crust of earth and wide pit—prepared against the rushing of the position, one of dozens that were all round the front as a protecting screen.