Midshipmen and Naval Lieutenants were in charge of the pinnaces towing strings of boats, and as they approached the shore, fired for all they were worth with machine guns mounted forward, protected by shields. Then, swinging round, they cast the boats adrift. Each boat had a few sailors, who rowed for shore like mad, and many in so doing lost their lives, shot in the back. To row an open boat, unprotected, into murderous machine gun and rifle fire requires pluck backed by a discipline which only the British Navy can supply. Some of the sailors grabbed rifles from dead and wounded soldiers and fought as infantrymen. I can see many such dead Naval heroes before my eyes now, lying still on the bloody sand. I am sitting on the boxes now, and “ping” goes something past my head, and then “ping-ping,” with a long ringing sound, follows one after the other. The crackle of musketry begins again, and faster and faster the bullets come. At last I know what bullets are like. The feeling at first is weird. We get behind the pile of boxes, and bullets hit bully beef and biscuit boxes or pass harmlessly overhead. At last, boats come alongside and we unload the boxes into them, and I go ashore with the first batch, and there I meet 86th and 87th Supply Officers, who landed two hours earlier. My servant meets me and asks where shall I sleep. What a question! What does he expect me to answer—“Room 44, first floor”? I say, “Oh, shove my kit down there,” pointing to some lying figures on the sand. Five minutes after he comes up, and with a scared voice says, “Them is all stiff corpses, sir; you can’t sleep there.” I reply, “Oh, damn it; go and sit down on my kit till I come back.” I start to work to get the stores higher up the cliff. Oh! the sand. It is devilish heavy going, walking up and down with my feet sinking in almost ankle-deep. It is quite dark now, and I stumble at frequent intervals over the dead. Parties are removing them, not for burial, but higher up the beach out of the way of the working parties. I run into the Brigade quartermaster-sergeant and ask him, “How’s the Brigadier?” He replies, “Killed, sir.” I can’t speak for a moment. “And the Brigade Major?” “Killed also, sir.” That finishes me. It is my first experience of the real horrors of war—losing those who had become friends, whom one respected. And I had worked in their headquarters in England every day for two months, knew them almost intimately, and looked forward with pleasure to going through the campaign on their Staff. “How did it happen, Leslie?” I ask. The General was shot in the stomach while in the pinnace, before he could step on to the hopper alongside the _River Clyde_, and died shortly after. The Brigade Major got it walking along the hopper. The _River Clyde_ was to have been Brigade H.Q., and the Brigade was to have taken “V” Beach that day. So far, “V” Beach was still Turkish. Their machine guns kept our men at bay. I wonder what it is like on the _River Clyde_