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Updated: May 1, 2025
Things meant for Anzac go to Helles, and vice versa: or, not infrequently, stores, supplies or luxuries arrive and are sent off on a little tour to Alexandria and Malta before delivery. The system would be perfect for the mellowing of port or madeira, but when it is applied to plum and apple jam or, when 18 pr. shell are sent to howitzers, the system needs overhauling.
Really, under these conditions, the Peninsula, we felt, would be quite "swish." On a certain morning Doe and I in our dug-out on Fusilier Bluff felt the pull and the fascination, coming over five miles of scrub, of the magical Cape Helles. It was but a score of weeks since the first invaders had stormed its beaches: and we wanted to drink again of the romance that charged the air.
We glanced into the sky at the shrapnel puffs, and immediately discovered two enemy aeroplanes flying lower than they had ever done before. We could almost see the observers leaning over the fuselage to spy out if the British on Helles were up to the monkey tricks they had played at Suvla.
Across the road a lighter was moored, from which we bathed happily in a peaceful sea, with the pale blue contours of Imbros and Samothrace cut clearly against the sky, and our trawlers and cruisers moving up and down on their ceaseless watch between Cape Helles and Anzac.
The last boat-load got aboard the Goliath at 4 p.m., but they had forgotten some of their kit, so the Bluejackets rowed ashore as they might to Southsea pier and brought it off for them and again no shot fired! Hove to off Cape Helles at quarter past five.
Here am I happily describing so local a thing as the effort of a big-hearted priest to rebuild our spiritual lives on the quiet moments of the Mass and the strange glorious mystery of penance, while the great Division which captured the beaches of Cape Helles had been brought to a standstill by the impregnable hill of Achi Baba, and uncounted troopships like our own were pouring through the Mediterranean to retrieve the fight.
Where we waited to bombard, as at Helles and Sedd-el-Bahr, we have got it in the neck. This "V" Beach business is the blot. Sedd-el-Bahr was supposed to be the softest landing of the lot, as it was the best harbour and seemed to lie specially at the mercy of the big guns of the Fleet.
"But the impossible landing was done by the grandest Division in history, when they were up to full strength. Now our divisions are jaded and done for. Besides, only one army could get away. Even if the Suvla crowd did effect a surprise escape, the Turk would see to it that the Helles mob didn't repeat the performance. Our Staff would have to sacrifice one army for the other.
"This Suvla army, unless it can get to the top of Sari Bair, is faced with destruction, and they tell me the Helles army is just the same, unless it can get to the top of Achi Baba. It never will now, sir. And how can we quit without being seen from those hills? The 'Uns know they've got us trapped. That's why they're coming through Servia, ammunition and all. They'll be on us soon."
Several weeks passed before we realised that the valiant armies there had laboured in vain, and that Sari-Bair had remained unconquered. We were far more conscious of the limited results of the battle on the Cape Helles side of Achi Baba.
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