In Egypt, while the 8th Battalion A.I.F. was under training, the men worked very hard indeed. Marches over the desert for fourteen hours at a stretch were not uncommon. When the troops returned at night they were too tired for any other relaxation than sleep. One evening, however, it was rumored that the _fiancée_ of a corporal in Private Coleheart's platoon had come into Mena Camp. She had landed at Suez from Melbourne the previous day and had journeyed direct to Cairo. She had been unable to endure the long separation from her lover. The corporal, obtaining three days' leave, married her. On the second day of the honeymoon, however, he was wired for to return immediately to Mena. The regiment was proceeding to Alexandria to embark for the Dardanelles. Husband and wife said good-bye, and the corporal sailed from Egypt with a heavy heart. During the voyage out he was sick, lying in his bunk the whole time until the ship arrived at Anzac. When his men fell in on deck he was too ill to make more than a perfunctory examination of their kits. From the sergeant, however, he learned that two men from a draft had been dispatched to the regiment at the last moment to complete its war establishment. One of them looked curiously familiar, but the corporal was too unwell to bother about trifles at that moment. They were all sent almost at once to the trenches, where--unlike the troops in France, who often spend no more than four days in their burrows--three weeks and even longer was the customary time for soldiers to be entrenched at a stretch. One of the two new hands, a slight little fellow named Whitening, found considerable difficulty in fetching up the supplies of water for his comrades. He seemed to have no grit in him, too, when the bullets were whizzing round, and appeared to have neither strength of frame nor strength of mind. Coleheart often saw him crying softly to himself at night. At last, in the early summer of last year, the Turks made their great onslaught on our trenches. They peppered the ground first with their great guns, and charged with fierce Oriental bravery, despising death as much as they seemed to despise our own preparations for driving them off. They came on in droves, and they were beaten down in herds, for our quick-firers and machine-guns never had a better target. At length, when they were almost over our trenches, their hearts failed them. They broke and turned tail in headlong flight. It was then that Coleheart and his companions were ordered out to disperse the flying enemy. But the Turkish guns had already opened on both friend and foe. Within a few yards of the trench Coleheart fell, his leg mangled horribly. Now it is well known that during a charge soldiers must leave their wounded comrades bleeding on the ground and await the final decision of arms before the injured may be tended. This latter duty is the care of the Red Cross men and the stretcher-bearers of a regiment.