Volume I Part 13 (1/2)

Bravo K! but kind as is your e the best buck up for the Army will be the news that the lads from Manchester are on their way to help us

The cable people have pinned athat the two hours' pull we have over Greenwich tie _before_ he wired to Maxwell He oing to bed, I sent hiht the Turks attacked the Australians and New Zealanders in great force, charging right up to the trenches, bugles blowing and shouting 'Allah Hu!' They were bayoneted The French are landing to lend a hand to the 29th Division Birdwood'sthem with the Naval Division” These, IK how ”I shall now be able to cheer up my troops by the prospect of speedy reinforceratulations, and appealing to theo on to say that we have used up the French and the Naval Division ”so that at present I have no reserve except cox when he arrives and the remainder of the French” I also say, simply, and without any reference to the War Office previous denial that there _was_ any second French Division, ”D'Amade informs me that the other French Division is ready to ee that it be despatched” As to the delay in letting ade; a delay which has to-day, so say the 29th Division, cost us Krithia and Achi Baba, I say ”Unluckily cox's Brigade is a day late, but I still trust it will arrive to- the day”

_Bis dot qui cito dat_ O truest proverb! One fresh man on Gallipoli to-day orth five afloat on the Mediterranean or fifty loafing around London in the Central Force At houres--I know thelers with some complacency that the sixty thousand effective bayonets leftthey are British--to overthrow the Turkish E like it, for my line of battle But what are the facts? Exactly one half ofwater, a line The other half ofline, are up the whole night ar desperately into the earth Now and then there is a hell of a fight, but that is incidental and a relief A single Division of my old ”Central Force,” so easily to be spared, so wasted where they are, could take this pick and spade work off the fighters But the civilians think, I am certain, we are in France, with a service of trains and motor transport at our backs so that our ”bayonets” are really free to devote their best energies to fighting My troops are becoe arland--!

_29th April, 1915 HMS ”QE” Off the Peninsula_ A biggish sea running, subsiding as the day went on--andhand-to-o very near starving us Until ork up soes, I shan't sleep sound Have lent Birdwood four Battalions of the Royal Naval Division and twoat helles to form my own reserve Teak Battalions; that is the exact measure of my executive power to shape the course of events; all the power I have to help either d'Amade or Hunter-Weston

Water is a worry; weather is a worry; the shelling from Asia is a thorn in my side The sailors had hoped they would be able to shi+eld the Southern point of the Peninsula by interposing their shi+ps but they can't Their gunnery won't run to it--was neveraeroplanes we can't do the spotting Our Regiain--won't be anything like theood There is no other way but fresh blood for it is sheer hule for life always lowers the will to fight even of the e asked ade had it in them to storade but not the sanable sea front if we don't get a fresh dose of energy to help us to push into the, as yet, very pregnable hinterland Since yesterday ht and left before an eneone for with a cheer on the 25th or 26th,--ever since then I have cursed with special bitterness the lack of vision which leaves us without that 10 per cent th which we could, and should, have had with us The most fatal heresy in war, and, with us, the most rank, is the heresy that battles can be ithout heavy loss--I don't care whether it is in men or in shi+ps The nextwon the battle, deci their 10 per cent renewed

[Illustration: ”W” BEACH]

At 9 o'clock I boarded HMS _Kennett_, a destroyer, and went ashore

Co with me, and we set foot on Turkish soil for the first time at 945 am at ”W” Beach What a scene! An ants' nest in revolution Five hundred of our fightingstones ith to ihies, barges, all converge through the heavy sith shouts and curses, bumps and hair's-breadth escapes Other swar, loading, road- h this pande pale, blood-stained, sroups of Officers and ineers had to say; nextas many of the wounded as we could and then I walked across to the Headquarters of the 29th Division (half a e abode for a Boss; some holes burrowed into a hillock In South Africa, this feature which looks like, and actually is, a good observing post, would have been thoroughly searched by fire The Turks seem, so far, to have left it pretty well alone

After a long talk during which we fixed up a good many moot points, went on to see General d'Ashi+p to see me I did not like to visit the French front in his absence, so took notes of the Turkish defences on ”V” and had a second and a e arrangements on ”W”

Roper, Phillimore (RN) and Fuller stood by and showed me round

At 130 pm re-embarked on the _QE_ and sailed towards Gaba Tepe

After watching our big guns shooting at the eneer--the sight seeing I mean--and boarded the destroyer _Colne_ which took , also Pollen, Dawnay and Jack Churchill Our destroyer got within a hundred yards or so of the shore e had to transhi+p into a picquet boat owing to the shalloater Quite a good lot of bullets were plopping into the water, so the Commodore ordered the _Colne_ to lie further out At this distance from the beach, withdrawn a little fro on), and yet so close that friends could be recognised, the picture as astonishi+ng No one has ever seen so strange a spectacle and I very ain The Australians and New Zealanders had fixed theh sandy cliffs, covered, wherever they were not quite sheer, with box scrub These cliffs were not in the least like what they had seelasses e reconnoitred them at a distance of a mile or more froinally iined them to be from the map Their features were tumbled, twisted, scarred--unclimbable, one would have said, were it not that their faces were now pock-e sand-e fro the crest a hot fire was being kept up, and swarh the air, far overhead for the most part, to drop into the sea that lay around us Yet all the ti about stark naked on the water's edge or swiate

Not a sign to show that they possess the things called nerves While ere looking, there was an alarures darted out of the caves on the face of the cliffs and scooted into the firing line, stooping low as they ran along the crest The clatter of the ht we had dropped in for a scrap of so pier and wereto inspect overseas is entitled to a salute of 17 guns--well, I got s are quieter than they have been since the landing, Birdie says, and the Turks for the ti have been beat He tellsbut there is no use trying to stop it: they take the off chance

So together we made our way up a steep spur, and in two hours had traversed the first line trenches and taken in the lie of the land Half e es and Godley, and had a talk with thees, since Duntroon days in Australia Frohts we could look down on to the strip of sand running Northwards frouns here which wiped out the landing parties whenever they tried to get ashore North of the present line The New Zealanders took these with the bayonet, and we held five or six hundred yards more coast line until ere forced back by Turkish counter-attacks in the afternoon and evening of the 25th The whole stretch is now do it lie the bodies of those killed at the first onset, and afterwards in the New Zealand bayonet charge Several boats are stranded along this no ht and bury the dead have only led to fresh losses No one ever landed out of these boats--so they say

Towards evening we re-embarked on the _Colne_ and at the very moment of transhi+pment from the picquet boat the ene with impartiality and liberality our trenches, our beaches and the sea The _Colne_ was in strangely troubled water, but, although the shot fell all about her, neither she nor the picquet boat was touched Five uns are very well hidden now, and the _QE_ can do nothing against them without the balloon to spot; we can't often spare one of our five aeroplanes for Gaba Tepe Going back we had souns at batteries in rear of Achi Baba

Anchored off Cape helles at dark A reply in fro!

The worst enemy a Chief has to face in war is an alar fellohen seen, not in a poetry book but in a long line running at you in a heavy jogtrot ith fixed bayonets gleahten me as much as one or two of my own friends No matter We are here to stay; in so far as my fixed determination can make it so; alive or dead, we stay

_30th April, 1915 HMS Queen Elizabeth_ Fro shells-- hay while the sun shi+nes and are letting ”V” Beach have it from their 6-inch howitzers on the plains of Troy So, once upon a tiround and plug proud Achilles in the heel--and never surely was any fabulous tendon more vulnerable than are our Southern beaches from Asia The audacious Commander Samson cheers us up He came aboard at 915 am and stakes his repute as an airuns and that once they do so the shi+ps will knock them out I was so pleased to hear him say so that I took hi to fix up a flight over the Asiatic shore, as well as select a flat piece of ground near the tip of the Peninsula's toe to alight upon

Saw Hunter-Weston: he is quite happy Touched on ”Y” Beach; concluded least said soonest mended The issues of the day before yesterday's battle seeht-have-beens, it seeot into a position do Krithia; a position from which--could they have held it--Turkish troops in or South of Krithia could have been cut off from their supplies These uns with thean to come back We were too weak and only one Battalion was left of our reserves--otherwise the day was ours Street, the GSOI of the Division, was in the thick of the battle--too far in for his rank, I aade Achi Baba would now be in our hands He said this to h I had rather disbelieve To ood as a mile” should run a ”allant Officer

But it can't be helped This is not the first time in history when the lack of a ha'porth of tar has spoilt the shi+p of State I would bear roan were it not that from the very moment when I set eyes on the Narroas sent to prize open, I had set my heart upon just this very identical ha'porth of tar--_videlicet_, the Indian Brigade

Our ained 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,up food, water and ammunition into the trenches This does not take into accountduty as cooks, orderlies, sentries over water, etc, etc Altogether, it see total are available for actual fighting purposes Had we even a Brigade of those backward Territorial reserve Battalions hoested, they would be worth I don't knohat, for they would release their equivalent of first-class fighting

There are quite a little budget of knotty points to settle between Hunter-Weston and d'A to French Headquarters By bad luck d'Amade ay, up in the front trenches, and I could not well deliver ain so 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 knohat 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 aps in the thinned ranks of those faiments!