literally covered with the
dead and wounded. An actual observer wrote of the scene:

"The ground presents an extraordinary sight when viewed through the
trench periscopes. Two hundred yards away, and even closer in some
places, are the Turkish trenches, and between them and our lines the
dead lie in hundreds. There are groups of twenty or thirty massed
together, as if for mutual protection, some lying on their faces, some
killed in the act of firing; others hung up in the barbed wire. In one
place a small group actually reached our parapet, and now lie dead on
it, shot at point-blank range or bayoneted. Hundreds of others lie
just outside their own trenches, where they were caught by rifle or
shrapnel when trying to regain them. Hundreds of wounded must have
perished between the lines."

There was a lull after this terrible slaughter, during which the Turks
made unsuccessful overtures to obtain an armistice to bury their dead.
On May 20, 1915, toward evening, the Turks again attacked,
concentrating on Quinn's Point, a strong Anzac redoubt at the outer
edge of the Australian trenches. No results were obtained and finally,
out of sheer necessity for reasons of health, an opportunity was given
the Turks to bury their slain.

There was some additional fighting on this line during the remaining
days of May, but nothing of real importance occurred. It was
calculated, at the end of the month, that the total British losses,
killed, wounded and missing and not including sick, was just short of
40,000 men. The figures for the sick were not given out, but reports
made later make it tolerably certain that they must have numbered
between 30,000 and 35,000 additional. The intensity of the struggle at
the Dardanelles will be realized when it is pointed out that the total
British casualties in the three years of the South African War were
only 38,156.

During the last two weeks of May the British and French troops on the
Krithia fronts made elaborate preparations for an attack upon the
Turkish lines. Miners had been brought out from England and France,
and mining and sapping had been conducted on a large scale. On June 4,
1915, Sir Ian Hamilton ordered the attack. It was preceded by the
usual heavy naval and artillery bombardment. Finally, at noon, the
mines were exploded, and the troops advanced along the whole line with
fixed bayonets.

It is calculated that the British had no less than 24,000 men on a
front of less than 4,00