Besides these main landings, two minor landings were to be made as follows: 4. At Beach S, a small beach, within the Straits, beyond Sedd-el-Bahr. 5. At Beach Y (on the Ægean, to the west of Krithia), a strip of sand below a precipitous cliff, gashed with steep, crumbling, and scrub-covered gullies. These two minor landings were to protect the flanks of the main landing parties, "to disseminate the forces of the enemy and to interrupt the arrival of his reinforcements." They were to take place at dawn (at about 5 A.M. or half an hour before the main attacks), without any preliminary bombardment from the fleet upon the landing places. Near Gaba Tepe only one landing was to be made, upon a small beach, 200 yards across, a mile to the north of Gaba Tepe promontory. The ground beyond this beach is abrupt sandy cliff, covered with scrub, flanked by Gaba Tepe, and commanded by the land to shoreward. For some days before the landing, the Army lay at Mudros, in Lemnos, aboard its transports, or engaged in tactical exercises ashore and in the harbour. Much bitter and ignorant criticism has been passed upon this delay, which was, unfortunately, very necessary. The month of April, 1915, in the Ægean, was a month of unusually unsettled weather; it was quite impossible to attempt the landing without calm water and the likelihood of fine weather for some days. In rough weather it would have been impossible to land laden soldiers with their stores through the surf of open beaches, under heavy fire, and those who maintain, that "other soldiers" (i.e. themselves) would have made the attempt, can have no knowledge of what wading ashore from a boat, in bad weather, in the Ægean or any other sea, even without a pack and with no enemy ahead, is like. But in unsettled weather the Gallipoli coast is not only difficult but exceedingly dangerous for small vessels. The currents are fierce, and a short and ugly sea gets up quickly and makes towing hazardous. Had the attempt been made in foul weather a great many men would have been drowned, some few would have reached the shore, and then the ships would have been forced off the coast. The few men left on the shore would have had to fight there with neither supplies nor supports till the enemy overwhelmed them.