It is strange to think, as I walk about once more on “W” Beach, that Suvla and Anzac no longer harbour British ships or house British troops, and that Turks now walk about unmolested in our late trenches and shelter themselves at night in our late dugouts. In a few days now Turks will be sitting in the place in which I am writing these notes. They are welcome, for our attempts to open their gates have failed. We have lost the game, but we have not been beaten by the Turks. They are no match for our troops. We have been beaten by Nature, or the geographical fastnesses of this impregnable Peninsula and the storms of winter. The new year is heralded in on “W” Beach by the shells of a big howitzer on the left shoulder of Achi Baba bursting with a deafening crash on the high ground of the beach, throwing large jagged splinters within a radius of two hundred yards. When such a shell bursts, all within that radius drop flat to earth or dive into a dugout. I am sure that people living further inland or in the trenches, if they have not lived on the beach, do not realize the great strain on the nerves that work under steady, effective shell fire is on this beach, cooped up as we are in such a small space, which is all a target, not to say the chief target, of the Turkish gunners. The 29th A.S.C. men are sticking it well. I think they guess that we are evacuating, and are therefore cheery. Issuing by day, as in the early days, is now out of the question. We issue at dusk, and even then in danger of a shell in our depot. But the A.S.C., or the “Army Safety Corps” as it is termed by many in France, must never cease doing its job, for a man in the front line is hungry three times a day. As S.S.O., my job now is to see that the four Supply Officers’ indents are satisfied in full, namely the Supply Officers of the 86th, 87th, 88th Brigades and the Divisional Artillery. I must get the food ready at our depot for the night’s issue for each group, out of which the four S.O.’s must see that their troops and animals get their full ration. Their respective jobs are far more trying than is mine now, for the difficulties of getting the supplies from the beach to the troops have increased a hundredfold.