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unition, especially Mark VII rifle ammunition, should instantly be despatched here _via_ Marseilles. "Battle in progress. Advance being held up by stubborn opposition." Within a few hours K.'s reply came in; he says:-- "It is difficult for me to judge the situation unless you can send me your expenditure of ammunition for which we have repeatedly asked. The question is not affected by the other considerations you mention." If space and time have no bearing on strategy and tactics, then K. is right. If ships sail over the sea as fast as railways run across the land; if Helles is nearer Woolwich than Calais; then he is right. I use the capital K. here impersonally, for I am sure the great man did not indite the message himself even though it may be headed from him to me. Late that night came another cable from the Master General of the Ordnance saying he was sending out "in the next relief ship 10,000 rounds of 18 pr. shrapnel, and 1,000 rounds of 4.5 inch high explosive." But why the next relief ship? It won't get here for another three weeks and by that time we should be, by all the laws of nature and of war, in Davy Jones's locker. True, we don't mean to be, whatever the Ordnance may do or leave undone but, so far as I can see, that won't be their fault. Neither I nor my Staff can make head or tail of these cables. They seem so unlike K.; so unlike all the people. Here we are:--The Turks in front of us--too close: the deep sea behind us--too close. We beg them "instantly" to send us 4.5 inch and other ammunition; "instantly, _via_ Marseilles":--they tell us in reply that they will send 1,000 rounds of the vital stuff, the 4.5 high explosive, "_in the next relief ship_"! Why, even in the South African War, before the siege of Ladysmith, one battery would fire five hundred rounds in a day. And this 1,000 rounds in the next relief ship (_via_ Alexandria) will take three weeks to get to us whereas stress was laid by me upon the Marseilles route. Now, to-day, (the 9th), I have at last been able to send the Ordnance a statement (made under extreme difficulty) of our ammunition expenditure; up to the 5th May; i.e., before the three days' battle began. We were then nine million small arm still to the good having spent eleven million. We had shot away 23,000 shrapnel, 18 pr., and had 48,000 in hand. We had fired off 5,000 of that (most vital) 4.5 howitzer and had 1,800 remaining. A.P.S. has been added saying the a
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