World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula
I find Phillips, our O.C. Company, has gone inland with some pack
mules. He comes back later with rather depressing news. I hear that
a battle has been started, but I do not pay much attention, for I am
quite accustomed now to the sound of rifle fire and the roar of the
ships’ guns. The battle develops in the afternoon to a general attack
on our part. We are well inshore now, I should say two and a half
miles. Anyway, no bullets are flying about the beach now. All snipers
have been rounded up, one of the worst offenders, a huge fellow,
falling dead from a tree yesterday.
_5.30 p.m._
Brigade Supply Officers are ordered to find out the location of their
units. Horses can be had on application from D.H.Q. I ask to be allowed
to proceed on foot, and am granted permission, but they rather wonder
why I ask. The honest reason is because I am nervous, and I prefer to
be nervous on foot than a nervous rider on horseback over a difficult
country. I make a bee-line inshore, and after a quick walk of fifteen
minutes or so become intensely interested in what I see. Shells are
passing over my head from the Fleet, but the rifle fire appears to have
died down. Wounded are straggling back in twos and threes, and bearers
carrying the more serious cases, with great fatigue to themselves. To
carry a man two and a half miles over rough ground on a stretcher is
hard work.
Nearing the line, I pass police forming battle posts, and these,
together with the badges of the wounded men, which are sewn on their
tunics, returning to the beaches, helps me to steer my course. Now and
again I am warned not to go near where snipers are said to be, and
perpetually I trip over thin black wires, which serve for the nonce for
signallers’ cables. Passing a cluster of farm buildings, I arrive at
last at a scene of great activity and feel relieved that I am once more
amongst men. A trench is being dug with forced energy, orderlies are
passing to and fro, signallers at work laying cables, doctors dressing
wounded, and bearers carrying them to the rear. I discover that we have
had a set-back. I learn that we were heavily outnumbered, but that at
5 p.m. the Turks had retreated hastily to almost beyond Krithia, which
lies in flames on the high land in front of me towards the left, and
that actually the Lancashires had been through the village.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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