ight, it seems, but were
knocked off this morning before they had time to entrench.[8] Seeing
they should have had several hours time to dig in, that seems strange.
Braithwaite handed me a bunch of signals and wires; also the news of
what I had known at the back of my mind since morning,--the fact that we
had not got Sari Bair! Then we started back to see de Robeck and Keyes.
For the first time in this expedition Roger Keyes seemed down on his
luck: we had often before seen him raging, never dejected. These awful
delays:--delay in landing the Irish; delay in attacking on the 7th;
delay all night of the 7th; delay during the day of the 8th and night of
the 8th, have simply deprived him of the power of speech,--to soldiers,
that is to say, though, to shipmates, no doubt...!

Now for Anzac. Since dawn a fever about Anzac had held me. Shades of
Staff College Professors, from you no forgiveness to a Chief who runs
about the mountain quitting his central post. But the luminous shade of
Napoleon would better understand my desperation. Some Generals are just
accumulators of the will of the C.-in-C. When that is the case, and when
they run down, there is only one man who can hope to pump in energy.

Exact at noon Roger Keyes and I pushed off in the racing motor boat. On
our way we stopped at "C" beach and picked up Commander Worsley. Next to
Anzac, but at the Cove, found that Birdwood had left word he would meet
me at the ex-Turkish Post No. 2,--so, as the water was shoal in spots,
we rowed down there in a dinghy, along the shore where our lives would
not have been worth half a minute's purchase just three days ago.

After scrambling awhile over the new trenches, Birdwood, Godley and I
sat down on a high spur above Godley's Headquarters which gave us a
grand outlook over the whole Suvla area, and across to Chunuk Bair. Here
we ate our rations and held an impromptu council of war; Shaw,
commanding the new 13th Division, joining in with us. All three Generals
were in high spirits and refused to allow themselves to be damped down
by the repulse of the morning's attack on the high ridge. They put down
that check to the lethargy of Suvla. Had Stopford taken up any point on
the watershed yesterday when it was unoccupied except by some fugitives,
the whole Turkish position on the Peninsula would have become so
critical that they could not have spared the numbers they have now
brought up to defend "Q" and Koja Chemen Tepe. The Anzac Ge