14th July, 1919.
PREFACE
“Sir William Douglas asks me ‘to write a few lines’ to be embodied in the preface to a history of the 42nd Division.
“In the regions of time and space the Dardanelles enterprise forms only a trifling part of the record of this famous Division; but, in the sphere of the imagination, that part will be reckoned by Lancastrians yet unborn as the most precious heirloom bequeathed to them by the generation who fought the great war.
“Why? I will give the reasons in the words of a gallant young Australian killed shortly after he wrote me as follows from the front in France: ‘I often compare the two situations: out here and on those wild romantic shores of the Ægean; I compare them and I find that the Peninsula war stands quite alone and apart, an ineffaceable memory.’
“Bearing in mind that I am limited to a few lines I propose to think out nothing new, but to repeat now what was jotted down about a sample of the 42nd Division at the time (the 4th June, 1915), in my post of command, shared that day with two enormous tarantulas—
“On the right the French rushed the ‘Haricot’—so long a thorn in their flesh; next to them the Anson lads stormed another big Turkish redoubt in a slap-dash style reminding me of the best work of the old Regular Army; but the boldest and most brilliant exploit of the lot was the charge made by the Manchester Brigade in the centre who wrested two lines of trenches from the Turks; and then, carrying right on to the lower slopes of Achi Baba, had nothing between them and its summit but the clear, unentrenched hillside. They lay there—the line of our brave lads, plainly visible to a pair of good glasses—there they actually lay! We wanted, so it seemed, but a reserve to advance in their support and carry them right up to the top. We said—and yet could hardly believe our own words—‘We are through!’
“Alas, too previous that remark. Everything began to go wrong. First the French were shelled and bombed out of the ‘Haricot’; next the right of the Naval Division became uncovered and they had to give way, losing many times more men in the yielding than in the capture of their ground. Then came the turn of the Manchesters, left in the lurch, with their right flank hanging in the air. By all the laws of war they ought to have tumbled back anyhow, but by the laws of the Manchesters they hung on and declared they could do so for ever....
