I've seen men, healthy, strong, hard-faced Irishmen, blown to shreds. I've helped to clear up the mess. I've trod on dead men's chests in the sand, and the ribs have bent in and the putrid gases of decay have burst through with a whhh-h-ff-f. But I'd rather have to deal with the dead and dying than a case of “sniper-madness.” I was just recovering from that attack of fever and dysentery, and these two were lying beside me; the one mumbling and the other panting in a fitful sleep. When they were questioned they could give very little information. “Where's Lieutenant S---?” “... Gone... they're all gone...” “How far did you go with him?” No answer. “Where are the others?” “... Gone... they're all gone...” “Are they killed?” “... Gone.” “Are any of the others alive?” “We got away... they're lost... dead, I think.” “Did you come straight back--it's a week since you were lost?” “It's days and days and long nights... couldn't move; couldn't move an inch, and poor old George dying under a rock... no cover; and they shot at us if we moved... we waved the stretchers when we found we'd got too far... too far we got... too far... much too far; shot at us...” “What about the sergeant?” “We got cut off... cut off... we tried to crawl away at night by rolling over and over down the hill, and creeping round bushes... always creeping an' crawling... but it took us two days and two nights to get away... crawling, creeping and crawling... an' they kep' firing at us...” “No food... we chewed grass... sucked dead grass to get some spittle... an' sometimes we tried to eat grass to fill up a bit.. . no food... no water...” They were complete wrecks. They couldn't keep their limbs still. They trembled and shook as they lay there. Their ribs were standing out like skeletons, and their stomachs had sunken in. They were black with sunburn, and filthily dirty. Gradually they got better. The glare of insanity became less obvious, but a certain haunted look never left them. They were broken men. Months afterwards they mumbled to themselves in the night-time. Nolan, one of the seafaring men of my section who was with the lost squads, also returned, but he had not suffered so badly, or at any rate he had been able to stand the strain better. It was about this time that we began to realise that the new landing had been a failure. It was becoming a stale-mate. It was like a clock with its hands stuck. The whole thing went ticking on every day, but there was no progress--nothing gained. And while we waited there the Turks brought up heavy guns and fresh troops on the hills. They consolidated their positions in a great semicircle all round us--and we just held the bay and the Salt Lake and the Kapanja Sirt.