Several days of welcome relief from the front line ensued. Men wandered through the battered forts of Sedd-el-Bahr, and marvelled at the dismantled guns and twisted ironwork. Others strolled around the fertile countryside, which was smothered with a profusion of red poppies, white daisies and blue larkspurs, as if to honour the French and British occupation.
After dark on the evening of May 19, the brigade again embarked from V Beach to return to Anzac Cove, where they arrived at dawn next morning. During the disembarkation a very sad incident occurred in the Auckland Battalion, which lost another officer, he being the twenty-seventh officer incapacitated out of the original twenty-nine combatants.
[CHAPTER X.]
The Arrival of the Mounteds.
During the first few days the troops were exhorted to hold on. There was no option. The line could not go forward, and it dare not go back. First it was rumoured that the East Lancashire Division, associated with us in Egypt, was coming to Anzac; then the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade from the Suez Canal; but Helles absorbed these. Worst still! On May 5 the New Zealand Infantry Brigade and the 2nd Australian Brigade were taken out of Anzac to assist in the thrust towards Krithia. On the left flank of Anzac, two weak battalions of the Royal Naval Division took over the line the New Zealand Brigade had vacated.
[Lent by Sergt. P. Tite, N.Z.E.
The Tangled Slopes of Mule Gully.