Our men are now busy digging themselves into the ground they gained on the 28th. The Turks have done a good lot of gunnery but no real counter-attack. Hunter-Weston's states show that during the past twenty-four hours well over half of his total strength are getting their artillery ashore, building piers, making roads, or bringing up food, water and ammunition into the trenches. This does not take into account men locally struck off fighting duty as cooks, orderlies, sentries over water, etc., etc. Altogether, it seems that not more than one-third of our fast diminishing total are available for actual fighting purposes. Had we even a Brigade of those backward Territorial reserve Battalions with whom the South of England is congested, they would be worth I don't know what, for they would release their equivalent of first-class fighting men to attend to their own business--the fighting.
There are quite a little budget of knotty points to settle between Hunter-Weston and d'Amade, so I made a careful note of them and went along to French Headquarters. By bad luck d'Amade was away, up in the front trenches, and I could not well deliver myself to des Coigns. So I said I would come again sometime to-morrow and once more wended my way along the busy beaches, and in doing so revisited the Turkish defences of "V" and "W." The more I look, the more do I marvel at the invincible spirit of the British soldier. Nothing is impossible to him; no General knows what he can do till he tries. Therefore, he, the British General, must always try! must never listen to the rule-of-thumb advisers who seek to chain down adventure to precedent. But our wounds make us weaker and weaker. Oh that we could fill up the gaps in the thinned ranks of those famous Regiments....!
Had ten minutes' talk with the French Captain commanding the battery of 75's now dug in close to the old Fort, where General d'Amade sleeps, or rather, is supposed to sleep. Here is the noisiest spot on God's earth. Not only do the 75's blaze away merrily from morn till dewy eve, and again from dewy eve till morn, to a tune that turns our gunners green with envy, but the enemy are not slow in replying, and although they have not yet exactly found the little beggars (most cunningly concealed with green boughs and brushwood), yet they go precious near them with big shell and small shell, shrapnel and H.E. As I was standing here I was greeted by an old Manchurian friend, le capitaine Reginald Kahn. He fought with the Boers against us and has taken his immense bulk into one campaign after another. A very clever writer, he has been entrusted by the French Government with the compilation of their official history of these operations.