28 September 1915

SUVLA - Lieutenant George Davidson, 89th Field Ambulance, RAMC, 29th Division - Protection from Turkish shelling was now of prime importance at Suvla. On the night of 28 September Lieutenant Davidson finished another day's work and went back to his dugout.

"I have come out to our dressing station for the night, and am in a newly made dugout, which has been deepened and heightened by myself since I arrived here three hours ago. It's back towards the enemy is 7 feet high, dug into a bank, with a high parapet of earth and a stone lined face. (It is never advisable to build with stone, a shell landing among stones can do a great deal of damage. In this case I could not do otherwise, sandbags were very scarce by this time, and it was with great difficulty we got any from the R.E.'s for the protection of our patients. A little after this date these stones of mine were sent flying.) It is of course open to the heavens where the stars are unusually bright tonight. It promises to be a warm night, the wind being SW, very unlike what we have had of late when the winds were from the north and keen by night. Just as it was getting dark-before 7pm I watched an aeroplane, evidently in difficulties from its low flight and with its engine knocking badly. It descended on a wide dusty road behind our base, when I expected the Turks to open fire on it, as they once did on a similar occasion at Helles, but they have left it in peace. General Percival, our Brigadier, paid us a visit here a couple of hours ago, and I tried to get the date of our next stunt from him but failed. I admired his caution - if he knew. He tells me a special telegram came from Kitchener to-day announcing the capture of 23,000 Germans in France, and forty guns, and more coming in all the time. One can do little here after dark-and so to bed. Between mother earth and myself is a ground sheet, near my feet my pick and spade, handy if I should feel cold and wish to do some digging during the night, as I may do when the moon rises about ten; beside me a miserable candle lamp and my revolver, and after getting into my heavy overcoat, with my pack for a pillow, hard though it is with mess-tin, jug and other such like material inside, and a blanket over my feet, I hope to get a few hours' sleep."

"

SOURCE:
G. Davidson, The Incomparable 29th and the River Clyde (Aberdeen: James Gordon Bisset, 1920), pp196-197.