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Updated: June 29, 2025
Close to the stone quay, stretched along the three-mile circle, were the fishing smacks, beyond them, so near that the anchor chains fouled, were the passenger ships with gigantic Greek flags painted on their sides, and beyond them transports from Marseilles, Malta, and Suvla Bay, black colliers, white hospital ships, burning green electric lights, red-bellied tramps and freighters, and, hemming them in, the grim, mouse-colored destroyers, submarines, cruisers, dreadnaughts.
"Does it strike you, Rupert," asked Monty, making a grimace, "that Old-Man-Turk has more guns firing than ever before?" "Yes," I answered. "The guns from Suvla have come." The words were no sooner out of my mouth than a shell shrieking into our own cookhouse, drove us like rabbits into the dug-out.
Finally there came a long dispatch from the United States, which, curiously enough, the British censor passed, telling of the utter defeat of the Turk, the complete success of the Suvla Bay maneuver, and intimating that the forcing of the Dardanelles was now but a question of a few days.
"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.
At night-time shortly after it became dark the Turkish artillery which had been reinforced with some heavier guns from Anzac and Suvla subjected the beaches to pretty heavy shell fire.
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.
Little did I realise when I met him on the barrack-square at Limerick how fate would throw us together upon the scorching sands and rocky ridges of Gallipoli, nor could either of us foresee the hairbreadth escapes and queer corners in which we found ourselves at Suvla Bay and on the Serbian frontier. I spotted him in the crowd as the only man on parade with a strong, clear-cut face.
But from lack of room on the island bases it was considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one brigade, the 29th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the concerted movement on Suvla. It was therefore sent separately to Anzac, and joined in with the Australians.
The fresh arrivals on the troopships brought with them like a breeze from the homeland that atmosphere of glowing optimism which prevailed in England in the early August days. The same news came from the opposite direction. For the streams of wounded, who in the weeks following the Suvla invasion poured into our Mudros hospitals, told us that the Turk was fairly on the run.
When the great attempt was made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from Anzac and by a new landing at Suvla Bay, the Irish were among the reinforcements told off for that surprise.
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