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[Page 8]
our left, and a Staff Officer went off to meet them. It happened to be my chief, and I was glad of the excuse to go with him.
The greyness of the morning had quite gone by now, and the air was very brilliant after the damp and gloom of the shelter. The road toward the line of battle ran by the cliff's edge and out at sea, escorted by destroyers, two battleships, with guns and turrets in blackest silhouette against the flashing sea and the silver fume of the horizon, went backward and forward at their slow and stately business and their solemn firing.
We met the escort just where a Red Cross flag was flying above the cliff burrows of the Field Ambulance. Some of the prisoners were badly wounded, and these were at once taken off for medical attention. The rest were halted, and several of the escort really danced round us, talking and laughing, not yet free from that first wild elation of the charge. The dust and sweat caked upon their faces made it almost impossible to see where the khaki ended: they were like clay models of a sculptor: and their bayonets lacked even so much lustre as tarnished foil. They were children intoxicated with some splendid adventure, as they stood around us, laughing and chattering of the deeds of their regiment; and the plaster of dust obliterating all lines, all hair, all signs of age, made them appear more than ever like children.
The Turks were very glad to have been taken, and when another Staff Officer came up, and spoke to them in their own language they were enthusiastically anxious to be pleasant. One felt a fresh rage against the Germans for having been able to dupe such fine fellows; for they were fine fellows, as they squatted there, many of them wounded, but none complaining, and all of them beaming at the cigarettes our soldiers offered them. It was, of course, impossible to examine the prisoners here more than cursorily because a group so large might have drawn the enemy's fire: so down they marched toward Lancashire Landing and the accommodation