Here was the field post-office with sacks and sacks of letters and parcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair of socks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box--sometimes nothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty shell--the contents having disappeared. What happened to all the parcels which never got to the Dardanelles no one knows, but those which did arrive were rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels containing cigarettes had a way of not getting delivered, and cakes and sweets often fell out mysteriously on the way from England. CHAPTER XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS Things became jumbled. The continual working up to the firing-line and the awful labour of carrying heavy men back to our dressing station: it went on. We got used to being always tired, and having only an hour or two of sleep. It was log-heavy, dreamless sleep... sheer nothingness. Just as tired when you were wakened in the early hours by a sleepy, grumbling guard. And then going round finding the men and wakening them up and getting them on parade. Every day the same... late into the night. Then came the disappearance of a certain section of our ambulance and the loss of an officer. This particular young lieutenant was left on Lemnos sick. He really was very sick indeed. He recovered to some extent of the fever, and joined us one day at Suvla. This was in the Old Dry Water-course period, when Hawk and I lived in the bush-grown ditch. Officers, N.C.O.'s, and men were tired out with overwork. This young officer came up to the Kapanja Sirt to take over the next spell of duty. I remember him now, pale and sickly, with the fever still hanging on him, and dark, sunken eyes. He spoke in a dull, lifeless way. “Do you think you'll be all right?” asked the adjutant. “Yes, I think so,” he answered. “Well, just stick here and send down the wounded as you find them. Don't go any farther along; it's too dangerous up there--you understand?” “All right, sir.” It was only a stroke of luck that I didn't stay with him and his stretcher-squads. “You'd better come down with me, sergeant,” says the adjutant. Next day the news spread in that mysterious way which has always puzzled me. It spread as news does spread in the wild and desolate regions of the earth. “... lost... all the lot...” “Who is?” “Up there... Lieutenant S--- and the squads...” “How-joo-know?” “Just heard--that wounded fellow over there on the stretcher... they went out early this morning, and they've gone--no sign, never came back at all--” “'E warn't fit ter take charge... 'e was ill, you could see.” “Nice thing ter do. The old man'll go ravin' mad.” “It was a ravin' mad thing to put the poor feller in charge... ” “Don't criticise yer officers,” said some wit, quoting the Army Regulations. The adjutant and a string of squads turned out, and we went back again to the spot where we had left the young officer the evening before.