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The thought that "Y" Beach, which was holding up this brigade, was once in our hands, adds its sting to other reports coming from that part of the field. In France these reports would have been impersonal messages arriving from afar. In Asia or Africa I would have been letting off the steam by galloping to d'Amade or Hunter-Weston.
Have lent Birdwood four Battalions of the Royal Naval Division and two more Battalions are landing at Helles to form my own reserve. Two weak Battalions; that is the exact measure of my executive power to shape the course of events; all the power I have to help either d'Amade or Hunter-Weston. Water is a worry; weather is a worry; the shelling from Asia is a thorn in my side.
But I doubt whether the townsfolk have ever seen anything to equal the coup d'oeil engineered by d'Amade. Under an Eastern sun the colours of the French uniforms, gaudy in themselves, ran riot, and the troops had surely been posted by one who was an artist in more than soldiering.
The battalion from the Naval Division gives, therefore, greater value to the whole force by being placed on the French right than by any other use I can put it to although it does seem strange to separate a small British unit by the entire French front from its own comrades. When d'Amade had done, de Robeck came along.
Although you excluded Asia from my operations, have been forced by tactical needs to ask d'Amade to do this and so relieve us from Artillery fire from the Asiatic shore. "Deeply regret to report the death of Brigadier-General Napier and to say that our losses, though not yet estimated, are sure to be very heavy.
Finally, I agreed to take with me the Assistant to the Director of Medical Services to advise his own Chief as to the local bearings of his scheme for clearing out the sick and wounded; the others stay here until they get their several shows into working order, and with that my A.G. had fain to be content. D'Amade and two or three Frenchmen are dining with me to-night.
For certainly during his conference on the 30th March with d'Amade and myself he never said or implied in any way that under conditions as he found them and as they were then set before him, there was no reasonable prospect of success: quite the contrary. Here are the conclusions as written at Malta: "Conclusion.
D'Amade says I have not quite correctly represented his views. Not fantastic honour, he says, caused him to say we had better, for a while, hold on, but rather the sense of prestige. He thought the departure of the troops following so closely on the heels of the naval repulse would have a bad moral effect on the Balkans.
Motored after early breakfast to French Headquarters at the Victoria College. Here I was met by d'Amade and an escort of Cuirassiers, and, getting on to my Australian horse, trotted off to parade. Coming on to the ground, the French trumpeters blew a lively fanfare which was followed by a roll of drums.
Sir Ian Hamilton made mention of the fearlessness of the division in his despatches, and Major-General D'Amade eulogised them for their bravery after the frays of the 6th, 7th, and 8th of May, 1915. In June, 1915, the Collingwood battalion was wiped out; of the officers of this battalion and of the Hood, who went to the attack, not one returned unwounded.
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