The Last Anxious Moments.

Midnight came and the firing died down as was the normal custom. Slowly the minutes crept by. One o'clock! Still there was no alarm. Some men began to feel the tension very keenly. Everybody else was safe. Would C party get away? At 1.30 the first of the C parties commenced to come in. At 1.45 the duty machine gun at the Apex fired three shots three times in rapid succession. This was the signal for all the machine guns of our infantry brigade to withdraw. With a quarter of the remaining infantry, the gunners marched down the gullies and joined up with the other detachments. The organization worked like clockwork. One party was two minutes early in the Chailak Dere and was halted by its captain until, to the second, the little party resumed its march and dovetailed into the long column now winding down the gully towards the muffied piers.

At two o'clock another party left. The men of the last group were now looking anxiously at their wristlet watches, page 291

[Photo by Capt. Wilding, N.Z.F.A.
Off Anzac: A Gun of the 6th Howitzer Battery.

which had been carefully synchronized. At about 2.15 each man in the trenches quietly walked out into the nearest communication trench. There was little time to lose. The gate in the Chailak Dere was to be closed at 2.25. Here a staff officer carefully checked the numbers and made sure that all were accounted for.