United States or Slovenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When Fate has first granted just a sip of the wine of success the slip between the cup and lip comes hardest. The upshot of the whole affair is that the enemy still hold a strong line of trenches between us and Achi Baba. Our four hundred prisoners, almost all made by the Manchester Brigade, amongst whom a good number of officers, do not console me.
We made it fast to the serow and I kept a second vine rope in my hands, swimming beside the animal as they dragged it to the other shore. It was landed safely and the wood cutter was hauled over by the same means. I had intended to swim back for my clothes but discovered that Achi had disappeared, taking my garments and those of the wood cutter with him.
We saw them abandoning their impregnable positions at Achi Baba, abandoning the forts of the Narrows, and retreating, if they could elude destruction, upon Constantinople.
Our hearts were merry, for had we not just heard that Achi Baba had fallen, that Bulgaria and Roumania had declared war on Turkey, and that the crackle of musketry to the north-east was due to certain Boers who were swarming up the heights overhanging the Kishlar Rocks? She must be a woman of temperament, Rumour, for when she smiles she is so charming; but when she frowns, who can be so ugly?
I have recently been obliged by circumstances to concentrate my main efforts on pushing forward towards Achi Baba so as to clear my main port of disembarkation of shell fire. I only await the promised reinforcements, however, to enable me to take the next step in the prosecution of my main plan from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
This Rest Camp of ours was near the toe and rather to the left of the centre line; in full view of Achi Baba itself, but screened to some extent from its lower slopes by an insignificant intermediate crest-line about 200 yards to our front. The so-called "trenches" as we found them, bore more resemblance to hastily constructed strings of golf bunkers than to anything else on earth.
Only too pleased to display before three eager novices their superior acquaintance with Gallipoli, they told us the story we had heard at Malta: the Helles army, firmly stopped by the hill of Achi Baba, was melting away in the atrocious heat; but some startling new venture was expected, for the forty quays of Alexandria had been scarcely sufficient to cater for the troops and stores that had put in there; and all the hospitals in Egypt had been emptied to admit twenty thousand casualties.
There was no second line behind them not this side of Achi Baba, at least. Now, i.e., ever since the failure of their grand attempt on the night of the 2nd-3rd May, they have been hard at work. Already their lines cover quite half the ground between the Aegean and the Straits; whilst, in rear again, we can see wired patches which we guess to be enfilading machine gun redoubts.
All that I could see of it in the moonlight was the white surf on the beach, the slope of Hunter Weston Hill, and the outline of Achi Baba, rising behind like a monument. Let Monty have the last word, for he spoke it well. He spoke it a few days ago, in the late autumn of 1918, that is to say, as the war breaks up, and nearly three years after we slipped away in the moonlight from W Beach.
His Chief of Staff says all goes well, but they have just had cables from my own Headquarters to tell them that heavy columns of Turks are massing behind Achi Baba for a fresh counter-attack. Thought, therefore, the wisest thing was to get back quickly. Reached camp again about 7 p.m., and found more news in office than I got on the spot.
Word Of The Day