October 5th
A beautiful summer day again. Turks shell us from 8 a.m. till 10 a.m., but all duds. No news, and no prospect of any progress in this campaign. Our aeroplanes up.
At 9.30 a.m. the Turks begin and are very busy all day with their shells. Our batteries do not reply much, and the battleships are practically silent all day. We have no shrapnel, though, but at four o’clock about a dozen 9-inch high explosives come over, and rather too near us to be pleasant. One shell pitched right in one of my battalion dumps, the 1st London, just arrived from Malta, and attached to our Brigade. We are therefore moving them to a safer place.
In our camp now we have the two Supply Sections of the 86th and 88th Brigades and representatives of each regiment in the Brigades, consisting of a Quartermaster or his sergeant, and a corporal and three privates. They look after the interests of their respective regiments on the beach, drawing supplies, ordnance, R.E. stores, letters, and baggage, which they escort up to the regiment each night by the mule-carts. New officers arriving and officers returning from hospital use our camp as a half-way house to the trenches. All drafts arriving are met by these battalions’ representatives and “looked after” generally by day and guided to their units by night.
Had a lovely bathe this morning with McDougall, Tooth, Carver, and Way at the foot of the cliffs. Very peaceful and beautiful, and it was hard to realize that there was a war on. In the far distance, across the Gulf of Saros could just be discerned the coast of Bulgaria, the country on which the eyes of all the world are turned at the moment. In a day or two we shall know whether she has joined our enemies or not.