In the first place it should be said that the beaches of Suvla are not the beaches of seaside resorts, all pleasant smooth sand and shingle. They are called beaches because they cannot well be called cliffs. They slope into the sea with some abruptness, in pentes of rock and tumbles of sand-dune difficult to land upon from boats. From them, one climbs onto sand-dune, into a sand-dune land, which is like nothing so much as a sea-marsh from which the water has receded. Walking on this soft sand is difficult, it is like walking in feathers; working, hauling and carrying upon it is very difficult. Upon this coast and country, roadless, wharfless, beachless and unimproved, nearly 30,000 men landed in the first ten hours of August 7th. At 10 A.M., on that day, when the sun was in his stride, the difficulty of those beaches began to tell on those upon them. There had been sharp fighting on and near the beaches, and shells were still falling here and there in all the ground which we had won. On and near the beaches there was a congestion of a very hindering kind. With men coming ashore, shells bursting among them, mules landing, biting, kicking, shying and stampeding, guns limbering up and trying to get out into position, more men coming ashore or seeking for the rest of their battalion in a crowd where all battalions looked alike, shouts, orders and counter-orders, ammunition boxes being passed along, water carts and transport being started for the firing line, wounded coming down or being helped down, or being loaded into lighters, doctors trying to clear the way for field dressing stations, with every now and then a shell from Ismail sending the sand in clouds over corpses, wounded men and fatigue parties, and a blinding August sun over all to exhaust and to madden, it was not possible to avoid congestion. This congestion was the first, but not the most fatal cause of the loss of time.