Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 240
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[Page 240]
thousands, and pushed up to the front. The Shore Is strewn with hundreds of boxes, containing biscuits, tinned meats, and ammunition, waiting to be carried up to the troops in the firing line. Every now and again, a land mine explodes, and all that is found of one soldier is his twisted rifle. The shells from the ships guns shriek overhead, and the enemy's shrapnel bursts on all sides, whilst he frequently sends an eight inch high explosive shell, close to the beaches with the most deafening report, scattering rocks and earth and fragments of steel, in all directions. The roar of rifles is incessant and unceasing. Streams of wounded arrive from the firing line, those who are able to walk, hobbling down to the beaches, and others being carried on stretchers.
We walk across the spit to Chocolate Hill, where our friends, the artillery from the Minneapolis, have been landed. The day is as hot as a furnace, and now we are only to get a cup of dirty water, and our minds will revert to the Minneapolis, lying so calmly in the bay, and to all the iced drinks so near, and yet so far. That night we find a resting place on the northern shore of the bay, on a little spit running out into the sea. The heat is gone and the firing has died down. All is still, and the air is delightfully cool. We have no tent and no shelter, except one we have improvised, out of the thick scrub. We make a fire and cook some bully beef, and borrow some water from some kind hearted sailors, on a lighter. Five hundred yards away lies the Transatlantic Palace of Luxury. You can see the Saloon lighted up. You realise it is the dinner hour. None of us say a word, but we are all