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[Page 58]
be here tonight. It may seem strange, but our front is only four hundred yards away from the Turks front line & sometimes the Germans (posing as Britishers, sing out to our chaps to cease firing as some of our men are arriving. Of course these Germans are dressed in Khaki the same as a British Officer, & show great daring in getting in our lines. Several have been caught & now every British Officer in the ranks is questioned now & again as to the name of his Regiment, Officer Commanding & so on, because these Germans are very smart & have a lot of information about the formation of our Regiments etc. Of course when one says "I vos English" it is all up & one was bayoneted the other day by some Australians, who found him in their ranks & questioned him on account of hearing him say "vos". Our boys were right too & they didn't waste much time on him. One German Officer even went so far as to address a note in person to the Commanding Officer of some of our Troops holding a position & instructing them to vacate it, but the ruse was discovered just in time. Major Bruce had a bullet pass over his finger & take a piece out of the top of it. He was showing it to us today & I said, "by jove that was a narrow escape", he replied quite unconcernedly "Yes it might have broken my finger".
Up to date we have had 3,500 casualties out of something over 30,000 men landed here at Gaba Tepe. That is considered to be most satisfactory, taken into consideration the open beach on which they had to land. Of course we have some each day & I