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Updated: May 31, 2025
He has great hopes that we shall have Achi Baba in our hands by sunset on the day of landing. If so he thinks we need have no fear for the future. All is worked out now and I do not quite see how we could improve upon our scheme with the means at our disposal.
At 4 o'clock I issued orders that the whole line, reinforced by the Australians, should on the stroke of 5.30 fix bayonets and storm Krithia and Achi Baba. At 5.15 the men-of-war went at it hot and strong with their big guns and fifteen minutes later the hour glass of eternity dropped a tiny grain labelled 5.30 p.m. 8.5.1915 into the lap of time.
The same old shelling and the same old rifle-fire went on week after week, varied only by the constant flutterings at Quinn's, where sometimes Turk, sometimes Anzac, got the better of the nightly bickerings. Rumours of victories at Cape Helles came frequently, but confirmation seldom followed. The fall of Achi Baba took place almost as often as the assassination of Enver Pasha.
Matthews smiled sarcastically at the War Office idea that no Turks can exist South of Achi Baba! At Sedd-el-Bahr, the first houses are empty, being open to the fire of the Fleet, but the best part of the other houses are defiladed by the ground and a month ago they were held. Glad I did not lose a minute after seeing the ground in asking Maxwell and Methuen to make me some trench mortars.
This was a difficult sector for the Quartermaster and his men. Setting out from rest camp each evening with the rations and mails when there were any loaded on mules, they ran the gauntlet across the open to a point where they entered the Mule trench, which ran up the side of the Achi Baba nullah. This trench was not wide enough for pack-animals to pass in it.
By those who trace the ringer of fate in earthly happenings, it has been called a dispensation that, at this particular juncture, a descendant of Achi no Omi should have been a warrior with a height of six feet nine inches,* eyes of a falcon, a beard like plaited gold-wire, a frown that terrified wild animals, and a smile that attracted children.
These cheery patients shocked our optimism by telling us that it was hopeless to expect the capture of the hill of Achi Baba by frontal assault and that any further advance at Cape Helles was scratched off the programme.
The birds, which seemed to revel in the excitements of war, soared and swept over the devastated tableland. Northward from our feet stretched this plateau of scarecrow trees, till it began to incline in a gentle rise, and finally met the sky in the summit of Achi Baba. That was the whole landscape a plateau overlooked by a gentle hill.
Monty stroked his bay's silk neck, as though he had heard nothing. "You've got his rein too tight, sir," the groom told me. "All right! I know how to mount a horse." I swung into the saddle, and, ignoring Monty, set the mare, which was very fresh, at a canter towards Artillery Road. Artillery Road was a winding gun-track that climbed out of Gully Ravine up to the tableland beneath Achi Baba.
We, therefore, should be able to make sure of securing the Achi Baba position." Also, because our force is too weak to hold the big country round Suvla Bay and at the same time operate against Kilid Bahr. If this landing at Helles is successful, he considers the probable further course of the operations.
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