Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/90

78 this. He had gone into the dugout, had taken off all his clothes because it was very hot, and had lain down on his bed, which was a raised bank of earth, perhaps three feet above the level of the floor. The shell had come through the roof, had gone into the floor of the dugout, had dug a hole ten feet deep and had then burst. The hole and the raised bank of earth together had protected the man from the concussion and from the chunks of shell. He himself was not touched. Everything which he possessed was blown into little flinders, and he was swearing because his afternoon sleep had been disturbed.

In the same place, in Gallipoli, the day after the landing, the 26th of April, 1915, an Australian Captain was with his platoon of men in a trench up the hill. An Australian Major suddenly appeared to this Captain and said: "Don't let your men fire to their front during the next half hour. An Indian working party has just gone up to your front, you will be hitting some of them." The Captain was a little puzzled at this, because he had seen no Indian working party, so he looked at the Major, and noticed that the Major's shoulder strap bore the number 31. That puzzled him, because