“Every Turk who held a rifle or commanded a machine-gun began to fire as fast as he could. From every point in their lines arose such a din of rifle-fire as I have seldom heard even at the crisis of a great engagement. It was one continuous blaze and rattle. From a gap in the parapet I could see the sharp tongues of flame flashing all along the edges, like a belt of jewels. Minute followed minute, and still the incalculable din continued. Now and again one of our guns flung up a shell which burst like a firework into brilliant stars, as though to ask, ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ Now and again another gun threw a larger shell which came lumbering up Shrapnel Gully with a leisurely note, to burst crashing among the enemy’s trenches. And still the roar of rifles and machine-guns went on incessantly, and still nothing occurred. Suddenly, after just a quarter of an hour, the tumult ceased, with as little reason as it had begun. “What was the origin of it all, no one who knows the Turk would guess. A salutation to the dawn of Constitution Day; panic at the imaginary appearance of ghostly bayonets fixed for the charge; the instinct which impels a man to fire a rifle when another fires? In lately captured orders, the Turks were seriously warned against wasting ammunition, and now, in a quarter of an hour, they had expended thousands of rounds upon sandbags; one man killed and two slightly wounded. I afterwards learnt that the Anzacs fired off only two belts (500 rounds) of machine-gun, and 74 rounds of rifle. “When the storm subsided, we and the Turkish snipers settled down again to normal relations, and all was star-lit peace. At half-past three the phantom of false dawn died into daylight, and the men who had been ‘standing to’ all night sank to sleep at the bottom of the trenches. Picking my way over their splendid forms, I climbed down the cliffs again to my cavern beside the sea. I was told that, as an attack was expected that night (spies so reported), not a single man in the Anzac force had gone sick.” That was a special occasion, but no matter where one slept at Anzac, the air overhead wailed ceaselessly with bullets, and from time to time shrapnel burst or heavy shell exploded, especially around headquarters close to the beach in the centre of Anzac Cove. There, up a short flight of steps, General Birdwood had his dug-out, and there during the night of July 27, Lieutenant B. W. Onslow (11th K.E.O. Lancers), the General’s A.D.C., an excellent soldier, sleeping on the top of his dug-out owing to the intense heat, was killed instantly as he slept. [Sidenote: THE _ARAGON_]