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[Page 41]
16/9/15 Another quiet day. All batmen standing to arms headed by Jery Bernan the cook and young Steve Murphy – a motley crew indeed. During the day nothing doing but discovered this morning that Abdul has withdrawn his firing line about 50 yards in one spot and lower down what looks like a flag but really an artillery mark is hanging over his parapet. Sniping nearly nonexistent and for hours not more than a score of shots fired. Don't know what the game is but it looks almost as if his trenches are practically deserted. Sniper below Crater active and bombed out.
Roused stretcher bearers up – instance how callous one gets after a little of this. Man of 24th got a bullet through head. Stretcher bearers picked him up ran him down to Pioneer Sergt. And said "here's a job for you" and then cleared off. Pioneer promptly buried him without any doctor having seen him!! Point arises was he dead? A case two days ago man with brain protruding from similar wound lived 24 hours. Made full inquiries and from all accounts this man must have been dead as he was plugged right through the skull and his brains pretty well scooped out. Room for doubt all the same. Paraded the stretcher bearers and roused hell into them told them they had buried man alive and so on. Also roused Pioneer Sgt. and scared the whole crowd of them. Callousness comes in here – the man dropped when hit, stretcher bearer walks along turns him over and said, "Oh he's dead it's a job for the Pioneers to shift" and left him there for 12 minutes before being ordered by an officer to shift him. Then picked the corpse up and shoved it into a grave without doctor viewing it. And these men only a few weeks ago would have fainted most likely at the sight of blood & dead men! It is wonderful how this business hardens one