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Updated: May 2, 2025
Enemy are entrenched, line upon line, behind wire entanglements spread to catch us wherever we might try to concentrate for an advance. Worst danger zone, the open sea, now traversed, but on land not yet out of the wood. Our main covering detachment held up on water's edge, at foot of amphitheatre of low cliffs round the little bay West of Sedd-el-Bahr.
Early in the afternoon Sedd-el-Bahr was attacked at close range, but not silenced till after 5 P.M. At this time British trawlers began sweeping the entrance for mines, and during the next day the mine field was cleared for a distance of four miles up the straits.
Here sleep many hundred soldiers, "morts sur le champs d'honneur," their képis on the crosses, and their graves adorned by flowers. The Jews and Senegalese had their own separate plots. Sedd-el-Bahr appeared to be but a collection of outer walls and broken pillars, posts and fountains, some of archaic design.
In five minutes I gained from these Officers five times more knowledge about Sedd-el-Bahr and Kum Kale than all their own bald despatches describing their own landings and cutting-out enterprises had given me. Paris' account had not helped me much either, the reason being that it was not first hand, was only so many words that he had heard, was not what he had felt.
Sedd-el-Bahr and Kum Kale were able to resume firing in a few days, for though the shells of the allied fleets had damaged the structural parts of these defenses, they had not landed troops out to occupy them, with the result that the Turks were enabled to intrench near the ruins and there reset their guns.
Would that we had left it severely alone and had landed a big force at Morto Bay whence we could have forced the Sedd-el-Bahr Turks to fall back. One thing is sure. Whatever happens to us here we are bound to win glory.
The Irresistible and Albion had by then joined the other British ships, and the Charlemagne had augmented the French force. At ten o'clock in the morning of February 25, 1915, the Queen Elizabeth, Gaulois, Irresistible, and Agamemnon began to fire on the forts Sedd-el-Bahr, Orkanieh, Kum Kale, and Cape Hellas the outer forts at long range, and drew replies from the Turkish guns.
The Suffren and Charlemagne also took part in this phase of the engagement, and later, in the afternoon, the Triumph and Albion concentrated fire on Sedd-el-Bahr, silencing its last guns by five o'clock in the evening.
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