"Sergeant-Major Bennett led us, but just as we made a dash a storm of lead was concentrated on us; Sergeant-Major Bennett was killed with a bullet through his brain. I then took charge and shouted to the boys to come on. The dash was quite one hundred yards, and I don't know whether I ran or prayed the faster. I wanted to succeed in my work, and I also wanted to have the benefit of dying with a prayer in my mind. Some of us having got up to the wires we started to cut them with the pliers, but you might as well try to cut the round tower at Cloyne with a pair of lady's scissors. The wire was of great strength, strained like fiddle strings, and so full of spikes that you could not get the pliers between. Heavens! I thought we were done; I threw the pliers from me. 'Pull them up!' I roared to the fellows; and I dashed at one of the upright posts, put my arms round it, and heaved and strained at it until it came up in my arms, the same as you would lift a child. "I believe there was great cheering when they saw what I was at, but I only heard the scream of bullets and saw dust rising all round me. Where they hit I do not know, or how many posts I pulled up. I did my best, and the boys that were with me did every bit as good as myself. "When the wire was down the rest of the lads came through like devils and reached the trenches. We won about 200 yards' length by twenty yards deep and 700 yards from the shore. We met a brave, honourable foe in the Turks, and I am sorry that such decent fighting men were brought into the row by such dirty tricksters as the Germans." In Sir Ian Hamilton's despatch describing the storming of "Beach W"--close to "Beach V"--by the Lancashire Fusiliers, there are some striking passages relating to men of the battalion who rushed forward to cut passages through the entanglements. "Again the heroic wire-cutters came out. Through glasses they could be seen quietly snipping away under a hellish fire, as if they were pruning a vineyard." For his gallantry in this undertaking Private William Keneally, one of the many Irishmen in the Lancashires, got the Victoria Cross. The distinction is greatly enhanced by the fact that Keneally was selected by his comrades in the ranks as the one among them best entitled to it. The official record says:--