brought a message from headquarters. He was getting a lot of
information and seemed to know several officers' names, but he bungled
over one of them, and on the officer he was speaking to inquiring, "Is
that dinkum?" he answered: "Yes, _that's_ his name!" There was no
further investigation, he was shot dead on the spot. The officer who
did it may have been hasty, but there can be no doubt that justice was
done, for he must have been either a Turk or a German and had already
found out too much.




CHAPTER XV

THE EVACUATION

Without warning, winter came down upon us. No one guessed he was so
near. We were still in our summer lack of clothing, and were not
prepared for cold weather, when like a wolf on the fold the blizzard
came down upon us. This was the worst enemy those battered troops had
yet encountered. Hardly any of those boys had ever seen snow and now
they were naked in the bitterest cold. There were more cases of
frost-bite than there were of wounds in the whole campaign. More had
their toes and fingers eaten off by Jack Frost than shells had
amputated. In those open, unprotected trenches, in misery such as they
had never dreamed could be, the lads from sunny Australia stood to
their posts. When the snow melted the trenches fell in and Turk and
Anzac stood exposed to each other's fire, but both were fighting a
common enemy and so hard went this battle with them as to compel a
truce in the fight of man against man.