Drafts came, but though the drafts were small they sometimes overwhelmed the original battalions, and, partly owing to the unavoidable suspension of drill, they were long in imbibing a good battalion’s spirit.[215] Even more serious was the necessity of hurrying new drafts at once into advanced positions. In a note written at Helles on August 30, after visiting the lines before Krithia, I observed: “A newly arrived draft has usually to join the rest of the battalion in the trenches or firing line at once. The men know nothing of the realities of war and weather. Shells and bullets affect them as they affect every one at first, and most people to the end. The sun strikes through them like X-rays. Dust fills their eyes and mouths. Flies cover their food, and keep them irritated and sleepless. In the advanced trenches, ten to one they get little beyond biscuit and bully beef, with an occasional share in an onion or pot of jam. Diarrhœa begins to affect them. They grow weak and their spirit sinks. In that condition they are probably called upon to resist or deliver an attack against a tough race of semi-barbarous soldiers famous at trench fighting for generations.” Interrupted by only few cool and rainy days, the heat continued through September, and the victims to dysentery increased. The shadow of approaching winter also lay upon the army, and its horrors were exaggerated, partly through the classic reputation of inhospitable Thrace, partly by the inexperience of the Anzacs, who had never seen snow or endured cold. More serious than cold was the anticipated downpour of rain, which would convert our roads along ravines into torrents, and fill the dusty communication trenches with mud. Unhappily, owing to the steep ascent to such positions as Quinn’s Post, and the far longer climb to the Apex, where we still clung to a scarcely tenable position overhanging the Farm below the summit of Chunuk Bair, the chief hardships of winter were likely to fall upon Anzac, where the men were least accustomed to resist them. In a note during the first week of September I observed: “If we remain through the winter, Anzac will need looking to. Cement, solid iron plates, corrugated iron to support sandbag roofs, timber such as the Turks already use for trenches, careful and difficult drainage in a country where the dry watercourses which become torrents in winter are now used as roads, spiked boots to climb the slimy paths now deep in dust--all must be prepared. The daily toil, already severe, will be much increased, and the fighting force can hardly be expected to carry it out. A crowd of ordinary labourers will be needed.” Gangs of Egyptian labourers were, in fact, brought to Imbros and set to work upon the main road through the camps there.