... Shortly after our arrival in the Dardanelles one of the mine sweepers was sunk and the body of a boy seaman floated by our ship. One of the survivors of the sunken _Irresistible_ jumped overboard and found the boy was not dead, though unconscious. We threw a rope and hauled them in. A marine stepped forward and took the boy from the arms of his rescuer. As he was carrying him to shelter a small shell from the enemy's gun blew off the marine's head. A sailor snatched the boy away from him. For half a minute the headless man, having his lungs still full of air, threw up his arms, and dashed madly about the deck. This was the only casualty on our ship during my service. V--CAPTURED ON BELGIAN COAST On May 23 we left the Dardanelles to have our guns refitted. May 27 we were fifteen miles off the Belgian coast and there we heard heavy bombardment. The following day H.M.S. _Drake_ asked for a loan of fifty men from our ship. I was one of the fifty. The _Drake_ was trying to locate a heavy German battery, and a lucky shot killed the gun crew but did not damage the guns. We fifty from the _Queen Elizabeth_ were sent ashore to destroy the guns by blowing them up. We reached them under the heavy fire of the enemy, took off the breeches and destroyed the mechanism. As we were setting the dynamite to blow up these guns, a party of about three hundred Germans surrounded us. Our rifles were stacked up about thirty feet away and in running to reach them several of us were wounded. I received slight flesh wounds in the arm and leg. After being searched and relieved of all weapons, we were marched to a barbed wire stockade, about a mile and a half inland, and were told that we were to be sent to Germany the next day. There was another stockade with British, French and Belgian prisoners near by, and over the barbed wire they threw us a football to amuse ourselves. We played football until dusk. A German soldier was sent with a spade to dig a hole for another post in support of the barbed wire gate. We played football all around the field and managed to get the German soldier in our midst. We bound and gagged him, seized his weapons and took his spade. It was getting dark and no one suspected but that we were still playing football. We took turns in digging under the barbed wire fence a tunnel for escape. While we were at work we had a genuine surprise. A German sentry on his rounds, trod on a weak spot over our tunnel and fell in, face downward. He could make no outcry as his mouth was filled with grass and dirt. We immediately bound and gagged him, took his weapons and left him there.