This affair, like most of our scraps, was done in the darkness, which made it all the more thrilling. Well, we dug and sapped and tunnelled towards the Turks, and when everything had been got ready, powder was packed in sandbags and fuses were put to them. The deeper the sandbags the worse the explosion. All was ready at last. The powder-bags were packed, the fuses were lit, and then the 11th and 12th Battalions began to finish the work which the artillery had begun. The guns had started at five o’clock, they went on booming till nine, then there was a fearful sound which was louder than the loudest thunder I ever heard, accompanied by an immense mass of red fire in the blackness of the night. I was two hundred yards away, but the very earth on which I stood shook and shivered with the upheaval. As soon as the crash came our chaps hopped up and rushed the shattered trenches. They found that a big crater had been made by the explosion, and that most of the Turks had been stiffened. Those who were left were either bayoneted or bombed. The Turks did not counter-attack that day. They had had enough of it. We had a good few casualties, but it was an effort that was worth while, because it showed that if we wanted a place we could take it, and at any time we liked. I saw all this very clearly, for I was going backward and forward all the time as a stretcher-bearer. The Turks gave us no chance and we gave them none; but at the same time they did not do anything that I would call really dirty or out of the way. A lot of them were fine fellows physically. Some of the Turkish diggers we got as prisoners had no fighting gear on them at all. They were just peasants who had been brought up to do the work. At last I fell ill with dysentery and gastritis, and came home on a huge hospital ship, with four thousand more sick and wounded soldiers. We had a six days’ run to Southampton, and had just under sixty deaths on board. They were buried at sea in batches, the biggest being eleven--and very solemn it all was. Now I have done; but I want to tell of just one more little thing that happened here in England, where I have been in hospital, and where people have been so good to us. It was Christmas-time, and we were having a Sunday evening service in hospital. We were asked what hymns we would like, and a chap spoke out and said, “Let’s have ‘We plough the fields and scatter The good seed on the land.’” The parson was puzzled. He hardly thought we could, because it was Christmas-time and this was a harvest hymn. “And it’s harvest-time now at home in Australia,” the chap said. So we had the good old hymn, and it took us back to home twelve thousand miles away. * * * * * I think the Anzacs did what they set out to do. CHAPTER VI “IMPERISHABLE GLORY” FOR THE KENSINGTONS