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This life holds few pleasures so agreeable as that of conveying startling news. "Who do you think's marching up the Gully?" I demanded. "I don't know. Who?" asked Monty. "The Munster Fusiliers!" "What? The immortal 29th Division? From Suvla. The dickens! What does it mean?" Before we could decide what it meant my batman came back from a visit to the French canteen at Seddel Bahr.
In the history of the expedition to the Dardanelles, the August battles in the area of Cape Helles figure as a pinning or holding attack by the British Army, designed to occupy the enemy while the Suvla Bay landing was effected.
Never had the generals of Germany so fine an opportunity of destroying the British Divisions that languished at Suvla and Helles. What chance had the Haughty Islanders now of escaping? The wintry storms were already cutting their frail line of communications by sea, and smashing up their miserable jetties on the beaches. The plot should unravel simply.
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.
"Now you know," said he, "what the Special Order about holding Helles was for to deceive old Tomfool Turk; and why those regiments from Suvla were landed here to appear to the Turk like reinforcements, but really to conduct the evacuation at Helles, having learnt the job at Suvla; and why we wanted the Turkish aeroplanes to get back with news of our landing of troops but, my bonny lad, for every two hundred we land by day, we'll take off two thousand by night!"
But it was a mere incident in trench warfare, and they were as blind to our real intentions at Cape Helles as they had been three weeks before at Suvla Bay and Anzac unless, indeed, with true Oriental passivity, they were content to see us leave their land in peace and had no mind to seek a triumph of destruction which would inure to the benefit of their uncongenial allies.
Every endeavor had to be made for concealment. The plan was splendidly successful, and the Turks apparently completely deceived. On December 20th the embarkation of the last troops at Suvla was accomplished. The operations at Anzac were conducted in the same way. Only picked battalions were left to the end, and these were carried safely off. An incident of the Dardanelles Expedition.
Here is the scene of a great and glorious attempt in war, and here lie many thousands of our dead. It is all pure poetry now, the wrecked lighters stuck in the sand, the sweep of Ocean Beach, the rounds of Suvla Bay.
All the coast between Suvla Bay and for a little way South of Gaba Tepe seems feasible for landing. I mean we could get ashore on a calm day if there was no enemy. Gaba Tepe itself would be ideal, but, alas, the Turks are not blind; it is a mass of trenches and wire. Further, it must be well under fire of guns from Kilid Bahr plateau, and is entirely commanded by the high ridge to the North of it.
The chief of them was a threefold advance north-east, east, and south-east from Anzac Cove on Sari Bair with its highest point at Koja-Chemen. It began without any great mishap, and General Stopford's 9th Corps was successfully landed on the shores of Suvla Bay during the night of 6-7 August and deployed next morning in the plain without serious resistance.
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