"I've been seventeen years in the army, and I've been in every war that England fought in that time," said he, "and I'll tell you now, the real Distinguished Conduct Medal men and the real V.C. heroes never get them. They're under the ground." Coming from the man it did, this expression of opinion was interesting, for he was Cooke, the man who had been given a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his work on the Western front. Since coming to the Peninsula he had been acting as a sharpshooter, and had been recommended for the V.C., the Victoria Cross, which is the highest reward for valor in the British army. He was only waiting then, for word to go to London, to get the cross pinned on by the King. "There's one man on this Peninsula," continued Cooke, "who's won the V.C. fifty times over; that's the donkey-man." The man Cooke meant was an Australian, a stretcher-bearer. His real name was Simpson, but nobody ever called him that. Because he was of Irish descent, the Australians, who dearly love nicknames, called him Murphy, or, Moriarty, or Dooley, or whatever Irish name first occurred to them. More generally, though, he was called the Man with the Donkey, and by this name he was known all over the Peninsula. In the early days, the Anzacs had captured some booty from the Turks and in it were some donkeys. It was in the strenuous time when men lay in all sorts of inaccessible places, dying and sorely wounded, Simpson in those days seemed everywhere. As soon as he heard of the capture he went down, looked appraisingly over the donkeys, and commandeered two of them. On one donkey he painted F.A. No. 1, and on the other, F.A. No. 2; F.A. being his abbreviation for Field Ambulance. Day and night after that Simpson could be seen going about among the wounded, here giving a man first aid, there loosening the equipment and making easier the last few minutes for some poor fellow too far gone to need any medical care. The wounded men who could not walk or limp down to the dressing station he carried down, one on each of the donkeys and one on his back or in his arms. He talked to the donkeys as they plodded slowly along, in a strange mixture of English, Arabic profanity, and Australian slang. Many an Australian or New Zealander who has never heard of Simpson remembers gratefully the attentions of a strangely gentle man who drove before him two small gray donkeys each of which carried a wounded soldier. In Australia long after this war is over men will thrill at the mention of the Man with the Donkey. I agreed with Cooke that this man had won the V.C. fifty times over. Cooke was going out that night, he told me, to stay for three or four days, sniping, between the lines. As soon as he came back he expected to go to London. "Before I go out," he said, "I'll show you a good place where you can get a shot at Abdul Pasha."