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Our whole scheme hinges on these crests of Sari Bair which dominate Anzac and Maidos; the Dardanelles and the Aegean. The destroyers next took us to Cape Helles where I held a pow wow at Army Headquarters, Generals Hunter-Weston and Gouraud being present as well as Birdwood and Braithwaite. Everyone keen and sanguine. Many minor suggestions; warm approval of the broad lines of the scheme.
The remainder lacked the offensive spirit after their heavy losses in August, and perhaps their hearts were not sufficiently in the struggle to welcome further sacrifice of life, with time already running in their favour. We heard of one British officer who had acted as a hostage during a short armistice at Anzac.
Doors had been cut in the sides of the old steamer, and lighters were moored alongside with launches. When she ran aground these lighters were towed round so as to form a gangway to the shore, and the troops poured down onto them. The Turks were as prepared in this case to repel an attack as at Anzac, and held their fire until the ship was hard and fast.
This proved, however, to be merely in the nature of a literary demonstration to divert the attention of the none too credulous Turk from the real purpose of the allied command. While the fleet of transports and warships was approaching the two bases under cover of the night, the Australian and New Zealand troops at Anzac and the British troops at Suvla were hastily preparing for leaving.
And still the Turks remained unmoved on the slopes of Sari Bair, and though the men of Anzac had the upper hand in sniping and moral there was not much prospect of getting the enemy rooted out of those confoundedly fine trenches of his for some time to come. But these things did not greatly depress the fine fellows who clung so tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs.
The 1st Australian Light Horse took 300 prisoners and a considerable quantity of ammunition and stores at Ameidat, and with the remainder of the Anzac Division reached Tel Abu Dilakh by the evening, and the Australian Mounted Division filled the gap between the Anzacs and the Londoners, but having been unable to water could not advance further.
They requested the honor of this post of danger and it could not be refused them. They must have expected that their small company would be still further thinned; but this place of miracles still had another in store, as the evacuation was accomplished from Anzac itself without a casualty. The last party to leave the beach was a hospital unit chaplain, doctors, and orderlies.
As the long, hot, dusty July days came to a close, the pulse of Anzac seemed to quicken. Men went about their work with increased energy, the Cove was busier than ever, and life altogether in that sun-scorched, sordid spot seemed less burdensome. Staff officers walked about with unaccustomed briskness, and made unnaturally long visits to observation points, gazing absorbedly at Turkish terrain.
Imagining the whole Suvla plain and its surrounding hills to be a horse-shoe, you might say the Turks held round three parts of the shoe, leaving us with the two heels at Caracol Dagh on the north and Anzac on the south, and a line between these two points across the plain.
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.
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