Quiet morning. In the afternoon the Turks put a dozen of the best over the beach, but did no harm. Bit of a battle on Chocolate Hill this afternoon at five, and rifle fire, and a great deal of shrapnel, for half an hour. Our battleships firing heavily and making a deafening din. Heavy thunderstorms at eight, with vivid forked lightning and rain. I suppose this is a foretaste of what is to come. The safety of the beaches has now greatly improved. West Beach and the beach adjacent are now joined by a deep cutting. A deep trench, starting at the Main Supply depot, runs down to West Beach, in which is laid a tramway used for carrying supplies from the piers to the depot. This is under cover, entirely hidden from the enemy by day. The earth taken from this cutting or deep trench has been thrown up in great mounds at the back of the two beaches, rendering them safe from high explosive shells, though, of course, not from shrapnel. But “Whistling Rufus” has not worried us since the late days of October, devoting his attention to the unfortunately situated “C” Beach on the other side of Lala Baba. The road leading up on the higher ground to our D.H.Q. is now sunk and the dug out earth, thrown up on the side facing the enemy, hides all transport by day entirely from his view. Since this has been done this road has been almost entirely free from shrapnel. _November 16th._ Men are hard at work digging our new camp in IX Corps Gully. We move there, when IX Corps H.Q. move to the end of the promontory. IX Corps new Headquarters should be entirely winterproof, even during the severest weather. They are also practically invulnerable, by reason of their position and the vast amount of labour that has been expended upon them. I myself saw sheds in sections being put bodily into the rock excavated to receive them. There were communication trenches cut in the living rock connecting dugout with dugout. Also, elaborate excavations in the rock formed shell-proof living quarters, and, when necessary, unlimited wood, iron, and sand-bags have been lavishly used. The whole place is a perfect engineering achievement—the most wonderful nest of safety that the mind of man could conceive. How different are the conditions at Lala Baba, but three miles away, where the wretched hovels of the troops cluster as thickly as the cells in a honeycomb. No coping of iron or beams there. A man is lucky if he has as much as a blanket or a waterproof sheet to stretch over his miserable hole in the ground—not enough shelter to keep out the raindrops, let alone shrapnel.