the open; after they were dug in, it buried them alive. Never did a regiment leave dugouts with so much joy as did the London Terriers when they entered the trenches for the first time. Ordinarily a man is much safer in the firing line than in rest dugouts. Trenches are so constructed that even when a shell drops right in the traverse where men are, only half a dozen or so suffer. In open or slightly protected ground where the dugouts are, the burst of a shrapnel shell covers an area twenty-five by two hundred yards in extent. A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim to identify the caliber of a gun by the sound the shell makes. Few live long enough to become such experts. In Gallipoli the average length of life was three weeks. In dugouts we always ate our meals, such as they were, to the accompaniment of "Turkish Delight," the Newfoundlanders' name for shrapnel. We had become accustomed to rifle bullets. When you hear the zing of a spent bullet or the sharp crack of an explosive, you know it has passed you. The one that hits you, you never hear. At first we dodged at the sound of a passing bullet, but soon we came actually to believe the superstition that a bullet would not hit a man unless it had on it his regimental number and his name. Then, too, a bullet leaves a clean wound, and a man hit by it drops out quietly. The shrapnel makes nasty, jagged, hideous wounds, the horrible recollection of which lingers for days in the minds of those who see them. It is little wonder that we preferred the firing line. [Illustration: Australians in trench on Gallipoli Peninsula, using the periscope Note the different shaped hats worn by the men, five kinds appearing in the little group] Every afternoon from just behind our line of dugouts an aëroplane buzzed up. At the tremendous height it looked like an immense blue-bottle fly. We always knew when it was two o'clock. Promptly at that hour every afternoon it winged its way over us and beyond to the Turkish trenches. At first the enemy's aëroplanes came out to meet ours, but a few encounters with our men soon convinced them of the futility of such attempts. After that, they relied on their artillery. In the air all around the tiny speck we could see white puffs of smoke that showed where their shrapnel was exploding. Sometimes those puffs were perilously close to it; at such times our hearts were in our mouths. Everybody in the trench craned his neck to see. When our aëroplane manoeuvered clear, you could hear a sigh of relief from every man.