With the monotony varied occasionally by some local engagement like this, we dragged through the hot, fly-pestered days, and cold, drafty, vermin-infested nights of September and early October. By the middle of October, disease and scarcity of water had depleted our ranks alarmingly. Instead of having four days on the firing line and eight days' rest, we were holding the firing line eight days and resting only four. In my platoon, of the six noncommissioned officers who had started with us, only two corporals were left, one other and I. For a week after the doctor had ordered him to leave the Peninsula, the other corporal hung on, pluckily determined not to leave me alone. All this time, the work of the platoon was divided between us; he stayed up half the night, and I the other half. At last, he had to be personally conducted to the clearing station. Just about the middle of October comes a Mohammedan feast that lasts for three or four days. During the days of the feast, while our battalion was in the firing line, some prisoners who surrendered told us that the Turks were suffering severely from lack of food and warm clothing. All sorts of rumors ran through the trench. One was that some one had reliable information that the supreme commander of the Turkish forces had sent to Berlin for men to reinforce his army. If the reinforcements did not come in four days, he would surrender his entire command. Men ordered off the Peninsula by the medical officer, instead of proceeding to the clearing station, sneaked back to their positions in the trench, waiting to see the surrender. But the surrender never came. Things went on in the same old dreary, changeless round. More than sickness, or bullets, the sordid monotony had begun to tell on the men. Every day, officers were besieged with requests for permission to go out between the lines to locate snipers. When men were wanted for night patrol, for covering parties, or for listening post details, every one volunteered. Ration parties to the beach, which had formerly been a dread, were now an eagerly sought variation, although it was a certainty that from every such party we should lose ten per cent. of the personnel. Any change, of any sort, was welcome. The thought of being killed had lost its fear. Daily intercourse with death had robbed it of its horror. Here was one case where familiarity had bred contempt. Most of the men had sunk into apathy, simply waiting for the day their turn was to come, wondering how soon would come the bullet that had on it their "name and number." Most of the men in talking to each other, especially to their sick comrades, spoke hopefully of the outcome; but those I talked with alone all had the same thought: only by a miracle could they escape alive; that miracle was a "cushy one."