"The public are hereby informed that the 700 British mitrailleuses and 300 French cannon captured during the battle of Ari-Bournu at Gallipoli by our heroic troops, in the course of bayonet charges in which they drove into the sea and drowned more than twenty thousand of the enemy, will be on exhibit in the foreign gallery of the Museum immediately after the cessation of hostilities." This startling item of information was so unexpected that it made us all long to get to Constantinople to see the trophies of Turkish prowess. It was solely with this object in view that we began making fresh preparations for a special trip to that city beautiful. CHAPTER XI WAR VIGNETTES AT ANZAC LANDING--SHRAPNEL VALLEY--THOSE WEIRD NAMES--MULES AND DONKEYS--SPLENDOURS OF AN ANZAC NIGHT--OUR GREAT GUNS AND OUR GUNNERS--VISIONS OF HUNTER RIVER AND WILLIAMS RIVER SCENES. Vignettes of battle! These are the kaleidoscopic pictures that remain mirrored in the memory. I have forgotten what the transports looked like when we reached Gallipoli. I only half remember the panorama of battle when we first tackled the Turk. Yet there is no forgetting these little snapshots of soldiering, the vivid vignettes which stand out in clear-cut silhouette against the background of our experiences. Somehow they seem more like tableaux vivants than a moving picture show. Certainly the impression is not blurred by action, so the mind, like a camera plate, retains the scene down to the minutest details. Perhaps, when we think of the big things that our lads have done, these little visions may seem hardly worth chronicling. But the Censor will not let me take photographs, and after all it might interest the old folks at home to scan these hurried lines and construct their own mental pictures of the rugged and inhospitable Gallipoli Peninsula where so many young Australians have fought and died for empire. First, the Cove! It was in Anzac Cove we first landed. In spite of the shrapnel shells which burst on the beach or plunged into the sea, we could take stock of the whole scene before us--afloat and ashore. Straight ahead the hills rose almost from the water's edge to a height of 400 feet. To right and left were the army stores: little mountains of bully beef and biscuits. Scores of soldiers moved hither and thither on fatigue duty, giving Anzac the appearance of a thriving port. At least five hundred men were swimming in the Cove entirely indifferent to the enemy's shells. Under the sheltering shadow of the hill was the field ambulance--doctors working overtime, orderlies running here and there, stretcher-bearers coming and going with their burdens of wounded and dead; seaward, transports lolled lazily on the placid bosom of the Mediterranean; torpedo boats streaked about looking for submarines; warships wreathed in battle-smoke belched broadsides; aloft, a circling aeroplane.