Services were held whenever possible, and sometimes under very peculiar circumstances.  Once service was being conducted in the gully when a platoon was observed coming down the opposite hill in a position exposed to rifle fire.  The thoughts of the audience were at once distracted from what the Padre was expounding by the risk the platoon was running; and members of the congregation pointed out the folly of such conduct, emphasizing their remarks by all the adjectives in the Australian vocabulary.  Suddenly a shell burst over the platoon and killed a few men.  After the wounded had been cared for, the Padre regained the attention of his congregation and gave out the last verse of “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.”  There was one man for whom I had a great admiration—­a clergyman in civil life but a stretcher-bearer on the Peninsula—­Private Greig McGregor.  He belonged to the 1st Field Ambulance, and I frequently saw him.  He always had a stretcher, either carrying a man or going for one, and in his odd moments he cared for the graves of those who were buried on Hell Spit.  The neatness of many of them was due to his kindly thought.  He gained the D.C.M., and richly deserved it.

All the graves were looked after by the departed one’s chums.  Each was adorned with the Corps’ emblems:  thus the Artillery used shell caps, the Army Medical Corps a Red Cross in stone, etc.

THE ENGINEERS

The Engineers did wonderfully good work, and to a layman their ingenuity was most marked.  Piers were made out of all sorts of things; for instance, a boat would be sunk and used as a buttress, then planks put over it for a wharf.  They built a very fine pier which was afterwards named Watson’s.  Again, the “monkey” of a pile driver they erected was formed out of an unexploded shell from the Goeben.  This warship, a German cruiser taken over by the Turks, was in the Sea of Marmora, and occasionally the Commander in a fit of German humour would fire a few shells over Gallipoli neck into the bay—­a distance of about eight or nine miles.  As soon as the Goeben began firing, one of our aeroplanes would go up, and shortly afterwards the Queen Elizabeth could be seen taking up a position on our side of the Peninsula, and loosing off.  Whether she hit the Goeben or not we never heard.  It was Mafeesh.

The Engineers also made miles upon miles of roads and, furthermore, created the nucleus of a water storage.  A number of large tanks from Egypt were placed high up on “Pluggey’s,” whence the water was reticulated into the far distant gullies.

TURKS ATTACK