e shock of whole regiments--the Turkish Allah Din!--our answering loud
Hurrahs. The moments to me were moments of unrelieved agony. I tried to
think of some possible source of help I had overlooked and could not. To
hear the battle cries of the fighting men and be tied to this
_Arcadian_--what torture!
Soon, amidst the dazzling yellow flashes of the bursting shells and star
bombs, there rose in beautiful parabolas all along our front coloured
balls of fire, green, red or white; signals to their own artillery from
the pistols of the Officers of the enemy. An ugly feature, these lights
so beautiful, because, presumably, in response to their appeal, the
Turkish shell were falling further down the Peninsula than at first, as
if they had lengthened their range and fuse, i.e., as if we were falling
back.
By now several disquietening messages had come in, especially from the
right, and although bad news was better than no news, or seemed so in
that darkness and confusion, yet my anxious mind was stretched on the
rack by inability to get contact with the Headquarters of the 29th
Division and the French. Bullets or shell had cut some of the wires, and
the telephone only worked intermittently. At 2 in the morning I had to
send a battalion of my reserve from the Royal Naval Division to
strengthen the French right. At 3 a.m. we heard--not from the
British--that the British had been broken and were falling back upon the
beaches. At 4 we heard from Hunter-Weston that, although the enemy had
pierced our line at one or two points, they had now been bloodily
repulsed. Thereupon, I gave the word for a general counter-attack and
our line began to advance. The whole country-side was covered with
retreating Turks and, as soon as it was light enough to see, our
shrapnel mowed them down by the score. We gained quite a lot of ground
at first, but afterwards came under enfilade fire from machine guns
cunningly hidden in folds of the ground. There was no forcing of these
by any _coup de main_ especially with worn out troops and guns which had
to husband their shell, and so we had to fall back on our starting
point. We have made several hundreds prisoners, and have killed a
multitude of the enemy.
I took Braithwaite and others of the G.S. with me and went ashore. At
the pier at "W" were several big lighters filled with wounded who
were about to be towed out to Hospital ships. Spent the best part
of an hour on the lighters. The cheeriness of
|