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might like a drink.) You filled your water bottle at some large tins on the beach into which water was pumped from a barge through a canvas hose. An A.M.C. man stood over these tins and there were several pannikins for ladling water out. There was also a low trough or tin for the mules. After the first few days these water tins, which were opposite the end of our gully, just on the edge of the sea, became very exposed to shrapnel and they built up sandbags in front of them. The water was taken up to the firing line in petrol or kerosene tins painted khaki and carried two on each side of a mule in wooden panniers … The men knew the value of these mules though they never liked them. As you went along the jostling crowded beach, a kick from a mule was very easy thing to get. You avoid them! A man would say – I’d rather have a bullet than a kick from a mule any day.
    A pile of the kerosene tins and a pile of biscuit boxes gradually began to rise in front of my dugout – high and wider every day. The kerosene tins often had water in them and both they and the biscuit boxes provided shelters for the men on the beach when shrapnel came, although the working parties usually disregarded the shrapnel altogether …
    Of course the beach was fearfully congested. As the night went on a great number of these stragglers were organised into parties to carry water, ammunition and food, up to the lines. I have heard their number put at anything from 600 to 1000. Many of them came down with wounded men. This is an offence in war, but few realised it at this early stage. The helping down of wounded did not really begin until about 4 or 5. Then it began to reach fair proportions – six men came down with one wounded officer. It is very easy to persuade yourself that you are really doing a charitable soldierly action in helping a wounded soldier to the rear. In later actions this has been chiefly done by the wounded themselves – one wounded man helping another – the men now realise that it is not right to leave the firing line. They were raw soldiers on that first day …
    I went to sleep at about 11 or 12 for a couple of hours or less – I don’t know if I even dropped off. The firing on the ridge above was tremendous and incessant and it sounded as though it were on the ridge above our heads – in fact many down on the beach thought it was – but it was not. There were every now and then a few specially sharp cracks and bullets whistled softly through the air …
    I thought I could not tell how important these hours or the first night might be – and I particularly wanted to know how the artillery was landing; so I got up again and sat down by D.H.Q. with some of the others. General Godley had been in there earlier in the evening as the guest of our general. Howse was standing outside, talking to Col. Giblin. Watson of the Signal Coy was there and clearly something was in the wind. In a minute or two I had what it was – some question as to whether we were to hold on or to embark at once. Col. Howse unquestionably thought it was likely that the casualty clearing hospital would have to move off at once …
    It was two o’clock then. I couldn’t help looking at the sky to see if the dawn were breaking. One knew that it might have been possible to embark part of the force before daybreak if we had begun at night – but there were only two and a half hours of darkness left. It would have been sheer annihilation to attempt embarkation then – I was sure of that – the only possible way would be to hold on all next day, prepare all possible means of safeguarding the retirement and then embark next night without the enemy knowing what we were thinking of (if it were possible to deceive him). Even so the last part of the force covering the retirement would probably be sacrificed. I waited there sitting on the sand slope with some companion in the moonlight – with Howse and Col. Giblin talking in front of us. The General had gone