No move could be made in daylight. That evening we received our ration
of rum, and under cover of darkness moved in open order across the Salt
Lake for about a mile, then through three miles of knee-high, prickly
underbrush, to where our division was intrenched. Our orders were to
reinforce the Irish. The Irish sadly needed reinforcing. Some of them
had been on the peninsula for months. Many of them are still there. From
the beach to the firing-line is not over four miles, but it is a ghastly
four miles of graveyard. Everywhere along the route are small, rude
wooden crosses, mute record of advances. Where the crosses are thickest
there the fighting was fiercest, and where the fighting was fiercest
there were the Irish. On every cross, besides a man's name and the date
of his death, is the name of his regiment. No other regiments have so
many crosses as the Dublins and the Munsters. And where the shrapnel
flew so fast that bodies mangled beyond hope of identity were buried in
a common grave, there also are the Dublins and Munsters; and the cross
over them reads "In Memory of Unknown Comrades."
[Sidenote: The incomparable Twenty-ninth.]
[Sidenote: How the hill was taken, and lost.]
The line on the left was held by the Twenty-ninth Division; the Dublins,
the Munsters, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Newfoundlanders
made up the 88th Brigade. The Newfoundlanders were reinforcements. From
the very first days of the Gallipoli campaign the other three regiments
had formed part of what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his report calls the
"incomparable Twenty-ninth Division." When the first landing was made,
this division, with the New-Zealanders, penetrated to the top of a hill
that commanded the Narrows. For forty-eight hours the result was in
doubt. The British attacked with bayonet and bombs, were driven back,
and repeatedly re-attacked. The New-Zealanders finally succeeded in
reaching the top, followed by the 88th Brigade. The Irish fought on the
tracks of a railroad that leads into Constantinople. At the end of
forty-eight hours of attacks and counter-attacks the position was
considered secure. The worn-out soldiers were relieved and went into
dug-outs. Then the relieving troops were attacked by an overwhelming
hostile force, and the hill was lost. A battery placed on that hill
could have shelled the Narrows and opened to our ships the way to
Constantinople. The hill was never retaken. When reinforcements came up
it was too late. The reinforcements lost their way. In his report
General Hamilton attributes our defeat to "fatal inertia." Just how
fatal was that inertia is known only to those who formed some of the
burial-parties.
[Sidenote: Newfoundlanders run in battle.]
[Sidenote: The Turks charge in mass formation.]
[Sidenote: Terrible casualties of the enemy.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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