But there were other hearts, yes, thousands and thousands of hearts as staunch as the “little admiral’s” in that red day of horror. There was the work done by the Australian Army Service Corps--landing a steady procession of boats loaded with medical and food supplies as well as ammunition, fleets on fleets of these boats from the transports and battleships moving to shore with the coolest regularity with the waters around every one of them constantly thrashed by tons of falling shells. Scores of the boats were blown up. But the others never stopped only where there was a chance of rescue of the men flung from the shattered boats. The stretcher-bearers and the doctors we could also see working calmly among the sand dunes, ignoring snipers’ bullets as though they had been harmless flakes of snow. Slow and painful files of the wounded--those who could walk or stagger along were being guided to protected places until the coming of night might enable their removal to the hospital ships. As for the dead whose countless prone bodies strewn upon the beach with curious pitiful inertness so different from that of sleep, that you know instinctively means death--there was no use then risking live men to give the dead the attention, to award them such decencies of care and burial as were their due. This also would be the work of the night. Yes, and with many a man as he worked over the graves of his fallen comrades pitching into that grave, himself become a dead man--betrayed to a sniper by the moonlight’s gleam. Twilight veiled the sun and then very suddenly black night came. Well, we had done the thing, done what many men of authority had thought it would be impossible for us to do, what Lord Kitchener was afterward to describe as one of the most brilliant feats of bravery and soldiering of the war. We had effected a landing at Gallipoli. Perilously we were to hold our place on this narrow little peninsula, this back door of the Dardenelles, for months to come. But at what a price! And through what suffering and horror! Out of the 20,000 men who landed at Gallipoli by my own observation and all report, I do not think that 1,000 are alive today! CHAPTER V HOLDING ON Our little fortress or “sangar” could be likened to a cauldron for it was constantly surrounded by fire--the bursting, flaming shells, and the pepper of snipers’ bullets like the sharp bubbling of boiling water to “carry on” the likeness of a cauldron. Down on the beach at the first ridge of rocky embankment the engineers had most bravely under a frightful fire blasted great dug-outs for the establishment of headquarters, a hospital, and the first station for the storing of supplies. There never was an instant’s cessation of the storm of Turkish shells from the batteries back of the cliffs, but other little companies like my own had gained a foot-hold on the first ridge and held on desperately.