The other incident is briefly told. On our last day in the line Harry's platoon were working stealthily in the hot sun at a new section of trench connecting two saps, and some one incautiously threw a little new-turned earth over the parapet. The Turks, who seldom molested any of the regular, established trenches with shell-fire, but hotly resented the making of new ones, opened fire with a light high-velocity gun, of the whizz-bang type. This was our first experience of the weapon, and the first experience of a whizz-bang is very disturbing. The long shriek of the ordinary shell encourages the usually futile hope that by ducking one may avoid destruction. With the whizz-bang there is no hope, for there is no warning; the sound and the shell arrive almost simultaneously. Harry's platoon did not like these things. The first three burst near but short of the trench, filling the air with fumes; the fourth hit and removed most of the parapet of one bay. Harry, hurrying along to the place, found the four men there considerably surprised, crouching in the corners and gazing stupidly at the yawning gap. It was undesirable, if not impossible, to rebuild the parapet during daylight, so he moved them into the next bay. He then went along the trench to see that all the men had ceased work. He heard two more shells burst behind him as he went. On his way back two men rushing round a corner--two men with white faces smeared with black and a little blood--almost knocked him down; they were speechless. He went through the bay which had been blown in; it was silent, empty; the bay beyond was silent too, save for the buzzing of a thousand flies. In it he had left eight men; six of them were lying dead. Two had marvellously escaped. The first whizz-bang had blown away the parapet; the second, following immediately after, had passed miraculously through the hole, straight into the trench--a piece of astounding bad luck or good gunnery. The men could not be buried till dusk, and we left them there. Two hours later, as we sat under a waterproof sheet and talked quietly of this thing, there came an engineer officer wandering along the trench. He had come, crouching, through those two shattered and yawning bays: he was hot and very angry. 'Why the hell don't you bury those Turks?' he said, 'they must have been there for weeks!' This is the kind of charge which infuriates the soldier at any time; and we did not like the added suggestion that those six good men of the 14th Platoon were dead Turks. We told him they were Englishmen, dead two hours. 'But, my God, man,' he said, 'they're black!' We led him back, incredulous, to the place. When we got there we understood. Whether from the explosion or the scorching sun in that airless place, I know not, but those six men were, as he said, literally black--black and reeking and hideous--and the flies...!