A special order to the troops:—
General Headquarters,
25th May, 1915.
1. Now that a clear month has passed since the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force began its night and day fighting with the enemy, the General Commanding desires me to explain to officers, non-commissioned officers and men the real significance of the calls made upon them to risk their lives apparently for nothing better than to gain a few yards of uncultivated land.
2. A comparatively small body of the finest troops in the world, French and British, have effected a lodgment close to the heart of a great continental empire, still formidable even in its decadence. Here they stand firm, or slowly advance, and in the efforts made by successive Turkish armies to dislodge them the rotten Government at Constantinople is gradually wearing itself out. The facts and figures upon which this conclusion is based have been checked and verified from a variety of sources. Agents of neutral powers possessing good sources of information have placed both the numbers and the losses of the enemy much higher than they are set forth here, but the General Commanding prefers to be on the safe side and to give his troops a strictly conservative estimate.
Before operations began the strength of the defenders of the Dardanelles was:—
| Gallipoli Peninsula | 34,000 and about 100 guns. |
| Asiatic side of Straits | 41,000 |
All the troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula and fifty per cent. of the troops on the Asiatic side were Nizam, that is to say, regular first line troops. They were transferable, and were actually transferred to this side upon which the invaders disembarked. Our Expeditionary Force effected its landing it will be seen, in the face of an enemy superior, not only to the covering parties which got ashore the first day, but superior actually to the total strength at our disposal. By the 12th May, the Turkish Army of occupation had been defeated in several engagements, and would have been at the end of their resources had they not meanwhile received reinforcements of 20,000 infantry and 21 batteries of Field Artillery.
Still the Expeditionary Force held its own, and more than its own, inflicting fresh bloody defeats upon the newcomers and again the Turks must certainly have given way had not a second reinforcement reached the Peninsula from Constantinople and Smyrna amounting at the lowest estimate to 24,000 men.
3. From what has been said it will be understood that the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, supported by its gallant comrades the Fleet, but with constantly diminishing effectives, has held in check or wrested ground from some 120,000 Turkish troops elaborately entrenched and supported by a powerful artillery.
The enemy has now few more Nizam troops at his disposal and not many Redif or second class troops. Up to date his casualties are 55,000, and again, in giving this figure, the General Commanding has preferred to err on the side of low estimates.