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Updated: May 31, 2025
"With all the devoted help of the Navy, it has taken us a day's hard fighting to make good our footing. Achi Baba Hill, only a cannon shot distant, will be attacked to-morrow, the 28th." After shipping ammunition for her big guns the Q.E. sailed at 7 a.m. for Gaba Tepe where we found Birdwood's base, the beach, being very severely shelled.
"Achi!" whimpered the little laundress; but "Snakes of Purgatory!" said the other, "what's a toe more or less when Madonna is round the corner with a blessing for us in her maunch?" A perceptible shiver of sensation swept over the church, although everybody in it was sure, before he had uttered a word, what that word ought to be.
During the small hours I wrote a second cable to K. telling him Hunter-Weston could not attack Achi Baba yesterday as his troops were worn out and some of his Battalions had lost a quarter of their effectives: also that we were already short of ammunition. Also that "Sedd-el-Bahr was a dreadful place to carry by open assault, being a labyrinth of rocks, galleries, ruins and entanglements."
During all this time the various Beaches and Rest Camps were regularly shelled by the enemy's heavy guns on the reverse slopes of Achi Baba and with even deadlier effect from the Asiatic coast. The beaches and the roads leading to them over the ridge received most of this unpleasant attention.
Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the British at Cape Helles would get Achi Baba, and soon all would be well.
We looked at each other in blank amazement and then began a survey of the ground below. Halfway down the mountain-side Achi discovered the ram feeding in an open meadow and we began at once to make our way down the face of the cliff. It was dangerous going, but we gained the meadow in safety and worked cautiously up to a grassy ridge where the goral had been standing.
More rain fell, and we got very wet and smeared with that remarkably tenacious mud which only Gallipoli can produce. We could not but be surprised at the smallness of this cockpit in which three nations battled. From the cliff at Cape Helles to the top of the impregnable Achi Baba was only 5-1/2 miles. The distance straight across the Peninsula at the firing line was not more than 3-1/2 miles.
But it is all I can do, as far as things have gone, to hang on by my eyelids to the Peninsula, and let alone K.'s strong, clear order, I can hardly consent, as a soldier, to entangle myself further in Asia, before I have made good Achi Baba. We are not strong enough to attack on both sides of the Straits. Given one more Division we might try: as things are, my troops won't cover the mileage.
Now for my last night's cable which, in the opinion of my Officers, summarises general result of lack of shell: "For the past three days we have fought our hardest for Achi Baba winding up with a bayonet charge by the whole force along the entire front, from sea to sea.
Hunter-Weston, Gouraud and Braithwaite agree that: had we only shell to repeat our bombardment of this morning, now, we could go on another 1,000 yards before dark, result, Achi Baba to-morrow, or, at the latest, the day after; Achi Baba and fifty guns perhaps with, say, 10,000 prisoners. At 5 p.m.
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