Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 79

[Page 79]

the narrowness of these earthern passages in which you live whilst all day the sun scorches you back and neck and makes you long to fly from for the cool of the evening when for a few hours you may escape from these human ovens. At the scat entrance of the Gully you will find the Divisional Headquarters of General —— who like everyone else ashore on Southern Gallipoli lives dug in to protect him and his staff against the constant shell fire. Passing up towards our advanced trenches you are astounded at the masses of men and horses and material which find shelter in this natural undergroud cutting. The long streams of sweating pack horses mules and donkeys pass one another without cessation.

There in a cleft on your right is the camp of the engineers a little further on you come upon the bivouac of the Indian Mule Train; a Red Cross Flag marks the entrance to a kind of cave which is full of wounded waiting to be carried to Gully Beach inside also are the tents of the Surgeons and Stretcher Bearers whilst a slab of rock at the far end has been turned into an operating table; along the road in every spot sheltered by the overhanging cliffs from the sun you will find hundreds of weary men who have just come from the trenches and who have flung themselves down to snatch a few hours sleep whilst they may.

They lie their unconscious and indifferent to the shells bursting overhead and the stream of stray bullets which come sizzing along. A man drops and is immediately carried to the Dressing Station but not one takes the smallest notice or even seeks cover for prolonged experience has had the effect of making nearly all indifferent or fatalists. At intervals roads have been cut out of the cliffs to allow guns to reach the plateau on either side or else to give easy access to our trenches at other