A beautiful day, but very cold. Turks shell the beaches pretty heavily in the morning and afternoon with high explosive and cause some casualties. Quite a new kind of shell, I think, and from new guns. One shell hits our depot, smashing our clerks’ office, but fortunately nobody is hurt. Poign Destre, of the Munsters, a charming boy, comes to spend a few days with us. He was out on the parapet during the night of the storm and was carried back unconscious, but is now quite fit again. Times are rather anxious just at present. Troops arrive this morning to reinforce. Evacuation of stores and equipment proceeding full steam ahead. _December 2nd._ Drafts arrive for the 29th Division. A beautiful day and not too cold. Turks busy with shrapnel. Go up to Brigade H.Q. with Horne. While up there, Turks shell beaches. Suddenly they open fire with two guns and shower of 5·9 shrapnel along the new second-line trenches which we have just passed. We have not had this 5·9 shrapnel since October 27th. About forty shells come over in rapid succession, two at a time. I hope they do not pepper the beaches with them. The ground is still damp after the flood. We are warned to expect many of these floods and blizzards. We pass General Byng and Staff while up at Brigade. General Cayley still as cheery as ever. Everybody busy repairing damaged dugouts. Work of evacuation proceeding very well. I wonder if John Turk can see. We have the advantage of the piers and beaches being under cover. _December 3rd._ We now hear a rumour that we are not evacuating at all, and that only the 29th are going, but I do not believe this. We learn this rumour from Sergeant Jones, of Jones’s water dump. Every day rumours are circulated from Sergeant Jones’s dugout on “A” Beach. All day officers and men who pass call in here and say, “Good-morning [or good-evening], Jones; what is the latest rumour?” They are invited to sit down while Jones tells the latest and best that he had heard from all sources—trenches, Navy, and beaches. I have seen at one time in Jones’s dugout a Brigadier, Major, and two Captains and a corporal all sitting round the oil-stove fire while Sergeant Jones, at his table, is eating his supper. As an officer comes in, Jones stands up, saying, “Good-evening, sir; what can I do for you?” If it is water required, then that worry has to be settled; if it is an ordinary call at this half-way house, then the officer is invited to sit down by the fire, Jones adding, if he should be at supper, “You will excuse me going on with my supper, won’t you, sir?” One night he said to me, “May I press you to a plate of porridge, sir?” We do not look upon him as a soldier or an N.C.O. It is difficult to describe how we regard him.