It was a quiet, sober lot of men who filed into a shady, tree-dotted ravine the next day behind the stretcher that bore the remains of Private Sam Lodge. Stenlake read the burial service. Everybody who could turned out to pay their last respects to the best liked man in the regiment. After the brief service, Colonel Burton, the commanding officer, Captain Carty, Lodge's company commander, a group of senior and junior officers, and a number of profoundly affected soldiers gathered about the grave while the body was lowered into it. In the shade of a spreading tree, within sound of the mournful wash of the tide in Suvla Bay, lies poor Sam Lodge, a good, cheerful soldier, uncomplaining always, a man whose last thought was for others. "Don't bother to lift me down off the parapet, boys," he had said when he was hit; "I'm finished." CHAPTER VI NO MAN'S LAND Our dugouts were located about a quarter of a mile inland from the edge of the Salt Lake. Somewhere at the other side of the Salt Lake was the cleverly concealed landing place of the aëroplane service. Commander Sampson, who had been in action since the beginning of the war, was in charge of the aëroplane squadron. One day, by clever manoeuvering he forced one of the enemy planes, a Taube, away from its own lines and back over the Salt Lake. Here after a spectacular fight in mid air, Sampson forced the other to surrender and captured his machine. The Taube he thereafter used for daily reconnaissance. Every afternoon we watched him hover over the Turkish lines, circle clear of their bursting shrapnel, poising long enough to complete his observations, then return to the Salt Lake with his report for our artillery and the navy. The day after Sam Lodge's burial, we watched two hostile 'planes chase Sampson back right to our trenches. When they came near enough, our men opened rapid fire that forced them to turn; but before Sampson reached his landing place at Salt Lake, we could see that he was in trouble. One of the wings of his machine was drooping badly. From the other side of the Salt Lake, a motor ambulance was tearing along towards the place where he was expected to land. The Taube sank gradually to the ground, the ambulance drew up to within about thirty feet of it, and turned about, waiting. We saw Sampson jump out of his seat, almost before the machine touched the ground, and walk to the waiting ambulance. The ambulance had just started, when a shell from a Turkish gun hit the prostrate aëroplane and tore a large hole in it. With marvelous precision, the Turkish battery pumped three or four shells almost on top of the first. In a few minutes, all that was left of the Taube was a twisted mass of frame work; of the wings, not a fragment remained.