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Mac waited eagerly for more light; but, when it came, found little to discover. The summits seemed to be won, but he could find no trace of the British nearer Anafarta. Sunday passed much in the same way as Saturday. The Suvla Bay force was still hanging about the landing-place, and there was no indication of a heavy engagement on their front.

Our ambulance wagons had to cross the Salt Lake, and often the wheels sank and we had to take another team of mules to pull them out. The Turks had a tower a gleaming white minaret just beyond Chocolate Hill, near the Moslem cemetery in the village of Anafarta. It was supposed to be a sacred tower, but as they used it as an observation post, our battle-ships in the bay blew it down.

Moving in a night attack on August 8, 1915, Irish troops stormed Chocolate Hill and came within measurable distance of connecting up with the Australian division. Then preparations were made for an attack upon the Anafarta Ridge. On August 11, 1915, the right wing of the forces landed at Suvla Bay succeeded in working along the coast and linking up with the Australians at Asma Dere.

To his front the ground fell abruptly in a deep ravine, beyond which lay ridge after ridge, and beyond again the high range behind Anafarta, three miles away, all standing out clearly in sun-topped ridges and shadow, in the refreshing air of early morning.

The new troops, once ashore at Suvla Bay, were to push rapidly across country, skirt Salt Lake, and carry the crest of the Anafarta Hills, a range running to something like 600 feet in height and dominating two important roads and the adjacent country, excepting the all-important peak of Sari Bair.

They brought with them to the hard-hitting Colonials the first word of the progress of the Anafarta operation, and it was a bitter disappointment to the latter to learn that their heroic efforts against Sari Bair had been largely made in vain because of the failure of the Suvla Bay force to accomplish its task. Both sides then busied themselves preparing for the new warfare in this region.

Chocolate Hill and Osman Oblu Tepe at the inner end of the Salt Lake, which were the main obstruction to the success of what seemed to be the plan of attack. He saw only a few Turks on these hills, and odd ones scurrying about near Anafarta, but never a body of them, large or small.

Splitting into two columns, one moved north and seized Karakol Bagh; the other and larger force marched across the low country until it had arrived in position facing the Anafarta Ridge, its objective.

Lying between the line of advance from Suvla Bay to the Anafarta Ridge and Asma Dere, the base of the Australian troops operating against Sari Bair, were a number of hills, two of which played supremely important parts in the fighting of the next few days. They have been called Chocolate Hill and Burnt Hill. It was in an action against Chocolate Hill that the battle opened.

The little well-informed lady remarked abruptly that she had two sons; one was just home wounded from Suvla Bay. What her son told her made her feel very grave. She said that the public was still quite in the dark about the battle of Anafarta. It had been a hideous muddle, and we had been badly beaten. The staff work had been awful. Nothing joined up, nothing was on the spot and in time.