During the month, the Italians crossed the Isonzo, but against Turkey no declaration of war had yet been made. Both sides in the European struggle still looked to Bulgaria as a vital point. Each was still trying to outbid the other by offers of territorial advantage, and both were equally confident of a successful bargain with that tough and secretive, but, in point of territorial ambitions, typically Balkan race.

GENERAL GOURAUD STANDING WITH GENERAL BAILLOUD

CHAPTER IX
THE PAUSE IN JULY

While dwelling upon prominent actions in our efforts to advance, such as those of June 4, June 21, and June 28 and the following days, one must always realise that the fighting in various parts of the front lines was in fact continuous by day and night. On both sides local attempts were repeatedly made to capture or destroy some section of the opposing trenches. It frequently happened that different parts of the same trench would be held by the enemy and our companies. At the turn of an angle, or the mouth of a communication trench, the men on either side would suddenly find themselves face to face with the enemy, and a combat, waged for bare life with bombs, bayonets, and revolvers, ensued. Sandbag barriers were quickly erected across entrances, but sometimes, while one section was at rest or engaged in cooking, a sentry would give warning that a party of about fifty men in blue-grey uniforms had crept over the parapets to right or left, cleared out the section there, and threatened to enfilade. At such moments the safety of a line depended upon the alert resource of some junior officer and the steady nerves of the platoon under his command. No history will ever record the deeds of silent self-sacrifice which ennobled these daily struggles, and passed almost unnoticed at the time, except by the men who witnessed them and were themselves too often afterwards obliterated with their memories.

Nor must it be forgotten that the Turkish bombardment was daily repeated at intervals in so-called “hates.” Though the front lines both at Helles and Anzac were too close together to be shelled with safety to their own men, all the beaches, except Gully Beach, were exposed; and though the effect of the fire could not be seen on Anzac Cove and Lancashire Landing, the range on both was accurately registered, and no one there was safe, whether disembarking stores, or dressing wounds, or just coming to land, or at rest, or bathing, or engaged in workshops and signalling offices, plump into which at Helles I saw a large shell fall on August 1 with terrible results in deaths and wounds.[137] But, certainly, V Beach, beside the River Clyde, was most openly exposed. The French depôt there constantly suffered, especially after the Turks late in June placed four heavy batteries on the opposite shore in a hidden position between Erenkeui and the Trojan plain. Nor were communications safe. On July 4 a large transport, the Carthage, a British ship but used by the French, was torpedoed by a submarine just off W Beach. Fortunately, she was empty.

TURKISH ATTACKS

Every day and night at the end of June and beginning of July was marked by minor attacks from the Turkish lines. But the attack on July 2 was evidently intended to be more than minor. It began with a violent bombardment of our extreme left, to which our guns, for mere want of ammunition, could make no efficient reply. At 6 p.m. the Turks came swarming down from the upper reaches of the Gully Ravine. Checked by machine-guns and the fire of the destroyer Scorpion, they renewed the bombardment, and immediately afterwards two battalions were seen advancing in regular order, shoulder to shoulder, across the open, their officers waving their swords, and running bravely forward to encourage their men. To machine-guns the shrapnel of the 10th Battery, R.F.A., was now added, and the Gurkhas were sent up to reinforce. No one could stand against our fire. The surviving Turks ran back into the ravine in disorder. Two clearly marked lines of dead showed the limit of the advance.

A similar attack on a grand scale was tried only two days later (the night of July 4–5). Anzac was heavily bombarded, a Turkish battleship in the Narrows near Chanak throwing at least twenty 11·2-inch shells into the lines there, right across the Peninsula, to say nothing of the guns in the Olive Grove and on the Anafarta Hills. At Helles, every gun on Achi Baba and the Asiatic shore was brought to bear. On W Beach alone, 700 big shells from Asia fell. At least 5000 shells exploded on our lines and beaches. At 7.30 a.m. the Turkish infantry attempted to storm, rightly choosing the junction of the Royal Naval Division with the French as our weakest point. A few yards of front line were entered, but in fifteen minutes cleared again. A similar attempt to cut in between the 42nd Division and the 29th entirely failed, and again the Turks were driven to the shelter of the upper Ravine. The General Staff estimated the enemy’s losses during the preceding week at over 5000 killed and 15,000 wounded. So encumbered was their position with the dead rotting in the intense heat that on July 10 a request for five hours’ armistice to bury them came from the German Commandant, signing himself “Weber Pasha.”[138] Unwillingly, and only in justice to his own men, Sir Ian refused. For it was known that Turks, even more than most troops, were reluctant to charge over their dead comrades, whose bodies thus became for us an extra barrier of defence, equal to a barbed-wire hedge.

OUR ATTACKS ON JULY 12 AND 13