rdered to fix bayonets and not to stop short of the objectives. At
5.30 in the afternoon came the order to advance, after a bombardment
by the fleet. Almost immediately all central control was lost, and
each unit was fighting desperately for itself in the hills and gullies
of that difficult, almost uncharted, country. Not for many hours
afterward, indeed, in some cases not for days, was it possible to
piece the story together.

The New Zealand troops got well past the Turkish machine guns without
discovering them, with the consequence that their supports were mown
down by a hail of fire from unexpected quarters. Nevertheless, they
got within a few yards of the Turkish trenches and proceeded to dig
themselves in. The Second Australian Infantry Brigade actually won
about 400 yards of ground and stuck to it with a tenacity warmly
praised by Sir Ian Hamilton. To the left the Eighty-seventh Brigade
had suffered terribly from machine-gun fire while the French had been
severely handled. The French troops were steady enough, but the
Senegalese broke in. At one point General d'Amade rallied the troops
in person.

Nightfall came and still Krithia and Achi Baba were far away. Thus
ended the second battle of Krithia, the supreme attempt of the allied
troops to carry the Turkish positions by a maneuver battle. Some
little ground had been gained, but the losses had been all out of
proportion to the advantage wrested from the brave and tenacious
Ottoman troops. The only consolation found in the situation by the
higher commands was in the assurance that the enemy had suffered
equally heavy losses, but as they were largely on the defensive this
statement is open to a very large measure of doubt.

While all this fighting was going on at the tip of the peninsula, the
Anzacs, or that part of them left on the cliffs overlooking the cove,
were having a hard time to maintain their positions. The Turks were
aware of the withdrawal of the two brigades to assist in the second
battle of Krithia, and they made a heavy demonstration to prevent the
departure of any further troops. To understand how vital a matter this
was one has only to read the dispatches of the period. Indeed, it has
often since been pointed out by military writers that, had the troops
landed from first to last at Anzac Cove been available at the tip of
the peninsula, Krithia and Achi Baba would undoubtedly have been
carried in the early days of the fighting, thus altering the