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Our whole scheme hinges on these crests of Sari Bair which dominate Anzac and Maidos; the Dardanelles and the Aegean. The destroyers next took us to Cape Helles where I held a pow wow at Army Headquarters, Generals Hunter-Weston and Gouraud being present as well as Birdwood and Braithwaite. Everyone keen and sanguine. Many minor suggestions; warm approval of the broad lines of the scheme.
With that began a slow and bloody siege of the defences of the Dardanelles, clambering up to the surprise landing of a fresh British army in Suvla Bay in August, and its failure in the battle of Anafarta, through incompetent commanders and a general sloppiness of leading, to cut off and capture Maidos and the Narrows defences.... Meanwhile the Russian hosts, which had reached their high-water mark in the capture of Przemysl, were being forced back first in the south and then in the north.
The peninsula is but ten or twelve miles wide at its widest, and the Dardanelles side is within range of the fleet's great guns, firing clear overland from the Aegean. It was by this indirect fire that Maidos was destroyed and Gallipoli partly smashed and emptied of its people.
"But assuming that reinforcements can only reach me in echelon of divisions I have decided that the best policy would be to adhere to my original plan of endeavouring to turn the enemy's right at Anzac with the first three divisions and to gain a position from Gaba Tepe to Maidos. By these means I should hope to compel the surrender of the whole Gallipoli Army.
It would enable us, moreover, to co-operate effectively with the Navy in stopping communication with the Asiatic shore, since Kilia Liman and Maidos would be under fire from our land guns.
Sari Bair is the "keep" to the Narrows; Chunuk Bair and Hill 305 are its keys: i.e., from those points the Turkish trenches opposite Birdwood can be enfiladed: the land and sea communications of the enemy holding Maidos, Kilid Bahr and Krithia can be seen and shelled and, in fact, any strong force of Turks guarding the European side of the Narrows can then be starved out, whilst a weak force will not long resist Gouraud and Hunter-Weston.
To divert the enemy's attention and to supplement the advance there and at Anzac, the 29th and 42nd Divisions attacked on our front that afternoon. In spite of very terrible losses these two divisions gained some ground. The Turks, however, threw in reinforcements from their reserves concentrated at Maidos, a force with which they had boastfully threatened to drive us into the sea.
So far as this question affects sending a 4th and 5th Division I would not refuse them on the score of ammunition alone, because with the Artillery of three new divisions complete I think we shall have as many guns as the terrain will allow us to use in the operations towards Maidos, and also sufficient to compete with any Artillery which the enemy could bring against the detachment operating on the Asiatic shore.
Side by side, Ken and Roy stumbled forward, while their captors cursed or jeered them in language which Roy fortunately could not understand, although to Ken every word of it was only too plain. From something the corporal let drop, he learnt that they were being taken, not to Kojadere, but to Eski Keni, which lies in the middle of the peninsula, about half-way between Gaba Tepe and Maidos.
We drove down to the sea and along the beach road through Maidos bombarded several weeks before, cross-country from the Aegean, and nothing now but bare, burnt walls on to Kilid Bahr, jammed with camels and ox-carts and soldiers, and then on toward the end of the peninsula. We were now beyond the Narrows and the Dardanelles.
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