Diary. Friday, April 23rd. I have just seen the most wonderful procession of ships I shall ever see. In the afternoon we left for the outer harbour. The wind was blowing; there was foam upon the sea and the air of the island was sparkling. With the band playing and flags flying, we steamed past the rest of the fleet. Cheers went from one end of the harbour to the other. Spring and summer met. Everybody felt it more than anything that had gone before.
After we had passed the fleet, the pageant of the fleet passed us. First the Queen Elizabeth, immense, beautiful lines, long, like a snake, straight as an arrow. This time there was silence. It was grim and very beautiful. We would rather have had the music and the cheers.... This morning instructions were given to the officers and landing arrangements made. We leave at 1.30 to-night. The Australians are to land first. This they should do to-night. Then we land.... Naval guns will have to cover our advance, and the men are to be warned that the naval fire is very accurate. They will need some reassuring if the fire is just over our heads. The 29th land at Helles, the French in Asia near Troy. This is curious, as they can’t support us or we them. The Naval Division goes north and makes a demonstration.... The general opinion is that very many boats must be sunk from the shore. Having got ashore, we go on to a rendezvous. We have no native guides.... The politicians are very unpopular.
The sea was very quiet between Lemnos and Anzac on April 24th. There were one or two alterations in plans, but nothing very material. We expected to have to land in the afternoon, but this was changed, and we were ordered to land after the Australians, who were to attack at 4.30 a.m. Some proposed to get up to see the first attack at dawn. I thought that we should see plenty of the attack before we had done with it, and preferred to sleep.
Diary. Sunday, April 25th. I got up at 6.30. Thoms, who shared my cabin, had been up earlier. There was a continuous roll of thunder from the south. Opposite to us the land rose steeply in cliffs and hills covered with the usual Mediterranean vegetation. The crackle of rifles sounded and ceased in turns.... Orders were given to us to start at 8.30 a.m.... The tows were punctual.... We were ordered to take practically nothing but rations. I gave my sleeping-bag to Kyriakidis, the old Greek interpreter whom I had snatched from the Arcadia, and took my British warm and my Burberry.... The tow was unpleasantly open to look at; there was naturally no shelter of any kind. We all packed in, and were towed across the shining sea towards the land fight.... We could see some still figures lying on the beach to our left, one or two in front. Some bullets splashed round.
As we were all jumping into the sea to flounder ashore, I heard cries from the sergeant at the back of the tow. He said to me: “These two men refuse to go ashore.” I turned and saw Kristo Keresteji and Yanni of Ayo Strati with mesmerized eyes looking at the plops that the bullets made in the water, and with their minds evidently fixed on the Greek equivalent of “Home, Sweet Home.” They were, however, pushed in, and we all scrambled on to that unholy land. The word was then, I thought rather unnecessarily, passed that we were under fire.
It was difficult to understand why the Turkish fire developed so late. If they had started shelling us during our landing as they shelled us later, our losses would have been very heavy. We frequently owed our salvation in the Peninsula to a Turkish weakness and a Turkish mistake. They were constantly slow to appreciate a position and take full advantage of it, and their shrapnel was generally fused too high. Hardly any man who landed escaped being thumped and bumped on different occasions by shrapnel, which would, of course, have killed or seriously wounded him if the burst had not been so high. I remember on the afternoon of the first landing a sailor was knocked down beside me, and I and another man carried him to what shelter there was. We found that, while the bullet had pierced his clothes, it had not even broken his skin. Said the sailor: “This is the third time that that’s ’appened to me to-day. I’m beginning to think of my little grey ’ome in the West.” So were others.
We had landed on a spit of land which in those days we called Shrapnel Point, to the left of what afterwards became Corps Headquarters, though later the other spit on the right usurped that name. I took cover under a bush with a New Zealand officer, Major Browne. This officer had risen from the ranks. He fought through the whole of the Gallipoli campaign, and in the end, to the sorrow of all who knew him, was killed as a Brigadier in France.