our hands.  When medicine had to be administered, the man came in, knelt down, and opened his mouth, and the medicine was poured into him without the glass touching his lips.  Food was given in the same way.  I don’t know how they got on when they were put on the ship.  When one was killed, he was wrapped up in a sheet and his comrades carried him shoulder-high to their cemetery, for they had a place set apart for their own dead.  They were constantly squatting on their haunches making a sort of pancake.  I tasted one; but it was too fatty and I spat it out, much to the amusement of the Indians.

One of them saw the humorous side of life.  He described to Mr. Henderson the different attitudes adopted towards Turkish shells by the British, Indian and Australian soldiers.  “British Tommy,” said he, “Turk shell, Tommy says ‘Ah!’ Turk shell, Indian say ‘Oosh!’ Australian say ‘Where the hell did that come from?’”

The Divisional Ammunition Column was composed of Sikhs, and they were a brave body of men.  It was their job to get the ammunition to the front line, so that they were always fair targets for the Turks.  The mules were hitched up in threes, one in rear of the other, each mule carrying two boxes of ammunition.  The train might number anything from 15 to 20 mules.  All went along at a trot, constantly under fire.  When a mule was hit he was unhitched, the boxes of ammunition were rolled off, and the train proceeded; nothing stopped them.  It was the same if one of the men became a casualty; he was put on one side to await the stretcher-bearers—­but almost always one of the other men appeared with a water bottle.

They were very adept in the management of mules.  Frequently a block would occur while the mule train occupied a sap; the mules at times became fractious and manipulated their hind legs with the most marvellous precision—­certainly they placed a good deal of weight in their arguments.  But in the midst of it all, when one could see nothing but mules’ heels, straps and ammunition boxes, the Indian drivers would talk to their charges and soothe them down.  I don’t know what they said, but presume it resembled the cooing, coaxing and persuasive tongue of our bullock-driver.  The mules were all stalled in the next gully to ours, and one afternoon three or four of us were sitting admiring the sunset when a shell came over.  It was different from that usually sent by Abdul, being seemingly formed of paper and black rag; someone suggested, too, that there was a good deal of faultiness in the powder.  From subsequent inquiries we found that what we saw going over our dug-outs was Mule!  A shell had burst right in one of them, and the resultant mass was what we had observed.  The Ceylon Tea Planter’s Corps was bivouacked just below us and were having tea at the time; their repast was mixed with mule.