Wednesday June 9th 15 QUINN'S POST

My company was relieved from
Courtenay's at 2 pm yesterday and at
8 am this morning I took over left
half section of this position & which
contains 3 sub-posts. Hawkes Bay
coy taking right section of 3 posts.

This is recognised to be the hottest
position on our front (or anywhere else)
and is a very unique one certainly.

It would take pages to describe and
the skill of a professional man to
draw an accurate plan of the
maze of trenches bombproofs & tunnels
which form the position though the
actual post is only about 200 yds,
and in one place at least the Turks
trenches on ground sloping upwards
in their favour are only 10 yards distant.

The situation is governed by many
considerations principal among which
are that circumstances prevent our
artillery getting to work on the hostile
position & neither party can harass
each other by rifle fire but merely
keep them in their trenches. This page 86 has not deterred us alltogether
tho [gap — reason: illegible] for [gap — reason: illegible] four occasions now we
have rushed them with the bayonet
at night & captured their front line
with many prisoners but their
successive trenches in rear & enfilade
fire made the place untenable.
So the fight goes on mostly with
hand grenades & bombs thrown
from trench mortars (on our side)
A climax will be reached
though for we have a gang
of miners driving three tunnels
12 feet from surface right forward
under the Turks. These are
now being connected up horizontally
and we hope soon to give them
a lift heavenwards with a few
cwt of guncotton. This post
being rather a trying one to the
men we work it 24 hours on &
24 hours off now.