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Here we are, all eyes, like potatoes in the cooking pot aforesaid, trying to peep through a slit where the lid is raised a few inches, ad hoc, as these blasted politicians like to say. My Staff are not with me in this holy of holies, but are stowed away in steel towers or jammed into 6-inch batteries. So we kept moving along and at 4.30 a.m. were off Sedd-el-Bahr. All quiet and grey.
Three quarters of an hour passed; the state of affairs at Sedd-el-Bahr was no better, and in an attack if you don't get better you get worse; the supports were not being landed; no answer had come to hand. So repeated my signal to Hunter-Weston, making it this time personal from me to him and ordering him to acknowledge receipt. "General Hamilton to General Hunter-Weston, Euryalus.
At Kum Kale, with their own ships at their back, and the deep Mendere River to their front, d'Amade's men should easily be able to hold their own for a day or two, all that we ask of them. The backbone of my enterprise is the 29th Division. At dawn I intend to land the covering force of that Division at Sedd-el-Bahr, Cape Helles and, D.V., in Morto Bay.
The first official announcement of failure was made December 20, 1916, when it was announced that the British forces at Anzac and Suvla Bay had been withdrawn, and that only the minor positions near Sedd-el-Bahr were occupied.
On the whole, he favours Sedd-el-Bahr as it "is the only place where transports could come in close and where the actual landing may be unopposed. It is open to question whether a landing could be effected elsewhere.
How I wish we had left "V" Beach severely alone. Big flanking attacks at "Y" and "S" might have converged on Sedd-el-Bahr and carried it from the rear when none of the garrison could have escaped. But then, until we tried, we were afraid fire from Asia might defeat the de Tott's Battery attack and that the "Y" party might not scale the cliffs. The Turks are stronger down here than at Gaba Tepe.
Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula by the forces of Britain and France began in December, 1915, the last soldiers of these two powers leaving Sedd-el-Bahr on January 7, 1916. It was expected that Italy would take a prominent part in the series of events which had taken place on these various fields.
Whilst having a hurried meal, Jack Churchill rushed down from the crow's nest to say that he thought we had carried the Fort above Sedd-el-Bahr. He had seen through a powerful naval glass some figures standing erect and silhouetted against the sky on the parapet. Only, he argued, British soldiers would stand against the skyline during a general action.
Arriving off Cape Helles in semi-darkness about 8 p.m., the Racoon slowed down and felt her way cautiously to the landing place at Sedd-el-Bahr, better known as "V" Beach, where she brought up alongside the River Clyde. The pontoons connecting that historic hulk with the shore had been much damaged the previous day by the enemy's big shells from Asia.
All prospered fairly well except at Sedd-el-Bahr, where a concentration of Turkish fire kept most of the troops from disembarking for thirty-two hours, and near Krithia, where on the 26th a counter-attack drove our forces back into their boats.
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