In less than half an hour from their great success, the Howe, Hood, and Anson Battalions were thus subjected to intense enfilading fire. The lately arrived Collingwood Battalion came to their support, but in this their first battle they were almost exterminated, losing over 600 men and their commanding officer, Commander Spearman, R.N., killed.[123] Compelled to retire across the open ground over which they had charged, and exposed to a torrential rain of bullets from machine-guns and rifles, this brigade of the unfortunate but invariably noble division suffered the losses of massacre. Even worse followed. The retirement and partial destruction of the Naval Brigade left the right flank of the Manchesters “in air” upon a very advanced position. Their Brigadier, General Noel Lee, an excellent leader of men, and in civil life partner in a well-known Lancashire shipping and cotton firm, was wounded; many of their officers killed. Yet the men declared they would for ever hold the ground they had so rapidly won; they only asked for help upon their right. To check the enfilading fire their right flank was thrown back to face it, and in the midst of tangled scrub and enemy trenches the brigade fought on two fronts at right angles to each other. It was an impossible position, but still the men clung on. Our reinforcements had already been almost exhausted in drafts to the extreme left, where the advance was held up, as described. [Sidenote: INSUFFICIENT RESULTS] At 6.30, General Hunter-Weston, commanding the VIIIth Corps, after consultation with Sir Ian, was constrained to “pull out” the Manchesters from their exposed and untenable salient. With almost mutinous reluctance the troops withdrew into the first line of Turkish trenches, taken in the first rush, and the remainder of the Division conformed. In spite of an endeavour made by the Royal Fusiliers at 4 p.m. to establish themselves beyond this first line, the 29th Division and the Indians had been unable to advance farther upon the left, and the gain so confidently expected, especially in the centre, was now reduced to an advance of 200 yards in some places and 400 yards in others. The prisoners amounted to 400, including 11 officers, among whom were 5 Germans, the relics of a machine-gun detachment from the _Goeben_.[124] During the night an excellent piece of work was accomplished by the Nelson Battalion, R.N.D. (Colonel Evelegh).[125] They were sent up to establish touch between the right of the 42nd Division and the left of the R.N.D. This task involved digging forward a “switch trench” under very heavy fire, but the connection between the exposed flanks was thus made good.