TCD MS 3414 folio 50 recto
[September 1915]
and rejoin these Brigades at daybreak the following day. Just as we were starting off the Turks opened shrapnel fire on us, which caused us to move off a bit quicker!
The Medical arrangements on that day were a disgrace to any white race. It was known that the desert over which the attack was ordered was waterless and yet with all the time we had had to prepare, not even a water cart had been provided. Surely some empty beer casks could have been mounted on a rough two-wheeled frame and a mule or donkey placed between two rough shafts to draw them. No, not the slightest effort was made to provide water transport, and our gallant <executive> doctors were left in the scorching desert with only a couple of puckals of water to dress their wounded. Men were dying simply for the want of a cup of water. There were, I believe two, motor ambulances, these were wandering about doing next to nothing, the severely wounded were taken 12 miles over the desert in ordinary transport carts and G.S. wagons. To make men suffer when it is not necessary is the most brutal thing imaginable, a Surgeon General has great power if he wishes