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Updated: June 15, 2025
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.
British and French warships posted close inshore and in wireless touch with the troops opened an intense bombardment of the Chunuk Bair, Hill Q, and Koja Chemen. Then the whistles blew, the infantry leaped out of its shallow trenches and, with a yell that echoed and reechoed through the Gallipoli hills, charged up the precipitous slopes.
The O.C. Rest Camp entered the mess, and announced with cynical cheerfulness: "Well, we've lost this campaign. The great new landing at Suvla has failed." There was a ghastly silence, and a voice muttered, "God!" "Yes, and had it succeeded we'd have won. But the Turks have got us held at Suvla beneath Sari Bair, same as they've got us held at Helles beneath Achi Baba.
The Turkish artillery poured a curtain of fire among the shrubs at the foot of the hill which effectively prevented the proposed advance. Farther to the south at the same time the Australians were attacking Hill 60 of the Sari Bair group and succeeded in driving the Turkish defenders from its crest. Thus practically ended the Suvla Bay operation and its supporting movements.
No sooner had he spoken than a high explosive from the Turkish positions on the Sari Bair range came screaming over the Salt Lake: "Z-z-z-e-e-e-o-o-o-p Crash!" They lay there like a little group of dead beetles, and the wounded were crawling away like ants into the dead yellow grass and the sage bushes to die. A whole platoon was smashed. It was not yet daylight.
The New Zealanders will have their special monument here beside the cemeteries where their many dead are lying. They took Chunuk Bair, and unsupported, pressed on to win the day, only to be outnumbered and met by terrible odds of swarming Turks.
The Turks so far suspect nothing, and Koja Chemen Tepe and Chunuk Bair, with all the intervening ridge, are still unentrenched and open to capture by a coup-de-main. Even if the naval objections to Bulair could be overcome, Sari Bair remains the better move of the two.
For this purpose a number of troopships and warships carrying what was known as the Greek Legion and made up of Cretan volunteers, were to be used. It was hoped that this diversion would attract most of the available reserves in and about the Gallipoli Peninsula and make impossible the reenforcement of the troops stationed near Anafarta Hills and Sari Bair.
Under so many savage blows, the labouring mountains brought forth Turks. Here and there advancing lines; dots moving over green patches; dots following one another across a broad red scar on the flank of Sari Bair: others following and yet others and others and others, closing in, disappearing, reappearing in close waves converging on the central and highest part of our position.
He looked long at my boots a pair of Russia leather, and his face seemed to regain steadiness. Putting his hand on my instep, he said: "Do dey vid you here? I 'ad drouble wid dat bair, I remember." I assured him that they had fitted beautifully. "Do you wand any boods?" he said. "I can make dem quickly; id is a slack dime." I answered: "Please, please! I want boots all round every kind!"
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