I wrote you last week a summary of our doings during the battle of D. Now I will tell you what we have done since, though it is mostly unpleasant.

The evening after I posted last week’s letter “D.”  Coy. had to find a firing party to shoot a havildar, a lance-naik and a sepoy for cowardice in face of the enemy.  Thank goodness North and not I was detailed for it.  They helped dig their own graves and were very brave about it.  They lay down in the graves to be shot.  Corp.  Boughey was one of the party and when I condoled with him afterwards on the unpleasantness of the job, he replied, “Well, Sir, I ’ad a bit of rust in my barrel wanted shootin’ out so it come in handy like”!

Thursday, 13th. We marched at 7 carrying food and water for two days.  We were in support of the frontal containing force.  The enemy were on the Canal, eight miles off.  We marched about four miles and then halted, and waited most of the day for orders.  A strong S.E. wind prevented us hearing anything of the battle but we could see a certain amount of shelling.  About 3 p.m. we got orders to go up in support of the frontal force, which (we were told) had advanced, the enemy having abandoned the Canal.  We marched another three miles to a fort, which stood about one and a quarter miles from the Canal, and from which we had driven the enemy in the morning.  Here we waited till after dark, when we heard that the frontal force had blundered into a Turkish rearguard holding the Canal, and had lost heavily and been obliged to retire.  It is these disconcerting surprises which try one’s spirit more than anything else.  We ate a cold and cheerless supper just beyond the fort, and then dug ourselves in, with other units of our brigade on either side of us.  It was windy and very cold.  There was a small and filthy hut with every mark of recent Turkish use, just behind the trench, but sooner or later every officer (I among the first) came to the conclusion that dirt was preferable to cold, and we all packed in round a fire which our signallers had lit there.

Friday, 14th. After a tolerable night we stood to arms at 5.30, a wholly displeasing process.  As soon as it was light, we advanced to within 1,200 yds. of the Canal and started digging in.  But it soon became clear that the enemy had cleared out in the night, so we stopped digging and started to clear up the battlefield, i.e., the space between us and the Canal.  The stretcher parties had been out during the night, but they had been fired on so heavily that they could not get beyond the 1,200 yd. line, so there were wounded to pick up as well as dead to bury and equipment to collect.  The dead were so pitiable that one quite forgot their ghastliness; but it was a gruesome job searching their pockets.  The poor wounded had had a fearful time too, lying out in the cold all night, but the satisfaction of getting them in cheered one up.  The ground was simply littered with pointed bullets.