Our goods delivered, we trek back, and on arrival at Sed-el-Bahr the sound of heavy rifle fire breaks out, but by the sound it is from our own rifles. We wonder what is happening, and think ourselves fortunate that we had finished our job before this activity started. I am in rear of the column, walking with my orderly about fifty yards behind the last mule, when I have a bad nerve shock. I have had many during the past week, but this one takes the biscuit. Out of a hole in the side of a broken-down house there leaps a French soldier. He shouts something to me in French and points a rifle, with gleaming bayonet fixed, at my chest. In days long gone past, it has sometimes happened that one of my young sisters or a brother with a warped sense of humour would leap round from the corner of the landing in our early home, just as I might be passing along, and shout “Boo-h!” I used to go hot and cold with fright, and appeared to cause intense amusement by my state of nerves. When this boy sentry, who by his looks could not have been more than nineteen, jumps out from his hole in the wall, my heart seems to stand still, until it feels that it is never going to start its job again, and then with a bound it carries on its job at about ten times its normal speed. My mouth feels like dry blotting-paper, and all I say is, “Oh, hell!” at the same time throwing my hands well over my head. My orderly, who appears most unconcerned, comes to my rescue and says with a Cockney accent “Ongley,” and our gallant ally brings his rifle to the order and allows us to pass. Previous to this incident I had been chatting to my orderly about his life in the Army in peace days, but now walk on in silence until we have overtaken the convoy, finding the mules halted. Suddenly the French battery that we had passed earlier in the evening opens a terrible fire. I go along to its position and find that half our convoy had passed earlier, but that, the battery being suddenly called into action, the rear half of our column had been ordered to stop. In the excitement two of the mules get adrift, and with good instinct trot off to their own lines, ignoring the cries in Russian from their drivers and the angry bark of the little “75’s.” A halt of ten minutes, and, again with polite apologies, the pleasant French gunner officers, wishing us “Bon soir,” allow us to proceed. Home to bed and a good night’s rest. _May 2nd._ A Taube flies over and drops one bomb on our new aerodrome to the left of Hill 138. One of our machines which is up swings round, heading straight for it, and quickly drives it back. A couple of aircraft guns from one of the ships put in some good practice, little white puffs of shrapnel bursting perilously near. A few wounded come in from a little show last night, and amongst them are wounded Turkish prisoners.