May 15th
All was quiet on the front last night, but to-day there has been one long artillery duel.
I go up to Brigade H.Q. this afternoon, and go round by the road through Sed-el-Bahr this time, because “I don’t like them shells; run as you may, you can’t get away from them.” On the way I passed Ashmead Bartlett riding with a Naval officer. The latter came and had tea with us later, and said he was on the Implacable, and Ashmead Bartlett was “bivvying” there as well. He is a correspondent for several papers.
Several battleships which were moored at the entrance move off at nightfall now, after that feat by the Turkish destroyer which sank the Goliath.
There is to be a general attack to-morrow night, Sunday. Some of the Tommies do not like attacking at night; they say, “Let us get them in the open, by day.”
The knocking out of a sniper by some of the South Wales Borderers was described to me to-day by one of their officers. Two officers were standing up in their trench by a machine gun, one holding a periscope, when a bullet went through the sleeve of his coat, wounding the officer to whom he was talking. The first officer spotted a sniper bob down immediately after. He then got down in the trench beside the man working the machine gun, and pointed out to him the bush behind which the sniper had crouched. The machine gun was laid on to it. Then the man on the machine gun and the officer took cover, the man holding his hand up to the machine gun ready to pop off. The officer then cautiously raised the periscope over the trench and looked carefully at the lower mirror. He saw in the mirror a head slowly appear above the bush eight hundred yards away, then a rifle lifted. He said to the machine gun man “Fire.” Pop-pop, and the sniper rolled over dead on his side beside the bush.