"At 1 o'clock the Lancashires were appearing over the ridge to the left
from 'Lancashire landing.' "We saw fifteen men in a window in the
castle on the right by the water. They signaled that they were all that
remained of the Dublins who had landed at the Camber at Seddul-Bahr. At
3 o'clock we got 150 men alive to shore. We watched our men working
to the right and up into the castle ruins--at each corner the officer
crouching in front with revolver in rest.
"When night came a house in Seddul-Bahr was burning brightly and there
was a full moon. We disembarked men at once. All around the wounded
cried for help and shelter against the bullets, but there was no room on
boats or gang-way for anything but the men to come to shore.
"For two nights no one had slept and then another day dawned. We were
firmly ashore at Lancashire landing, and at Du Toit's battery to the
northeast, and the Australians were dug in at Anzac. An end had to be
made of V beach. The whole fleet collected and all morning blew the
ridge and castle and town to pieces.
"And all the time that wonderful infantry went forward up the hill and
through the ruined town. The troops that went in that attack had already
lost half their strength; the officers that led up those narrow streets
were nearly all killed. Dead beat, at 1 o'clock, before the final rush,
they hesitated. Then our last colonel, a staff man, Col. Doughty Wylie,
ran ashore with a cane, ran right up the hill, ran through the last
handful of men sheltering under the crest, took them with a rush into
the Turkish trench, and fell with a bullet through his head. But the
Turks ran and the ridge was ours."
Many weeks of bloody fighting followed and while there was talk early in
November of a possible abandonment of the Dardanelles campaign, the end
of the month found the struggle still in progress, with no end in sight.
Official figures made public October 15, show that the British
casualties at the Dardanelles up to October 9 were 96,899, of whom
1,185 were officers. The casualties among the Australian troops on the
Gallipoli peninsula up to the same date amounted to 29,121 officers and
men.
THE ATTITUDE OF GREECE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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