Ride up to Gully Beach with Cooke and Farquhar and see Brigade, and after, ride up the gully and across to Pink Farm. Nothing doing on front. We enjoy the ride and exercise. Devilish difficult getting a decent ride nowadays. At Pink Farm, bullets as usual chanting their pinging song.
On the way back a Monitor up the coast starts firing heavily, making a huge flash, lighting up for a big distance the sky and land, a roar like a crash of thunder immediately following.
August 6th.
On duty at 6 a.m. at Supply depot. Several shells come over at the shipping, but none into our depot, shrieking overhead like lost spirits.
Distant sounds of heavy bombardment going on up north, and one man said that he saw through glasses shrapnel bursting up the coast ten miles away. If so, a landing probably is being attempted at Suvla Bay.
Ammunition ship with an evidently damned fool of a captain comes in at two o’clock in broad daylight, and of course gets shelled. Pretty good shooting on part of Mr. Turk, and ship gets several narrow shaves. The vessel then backs out towards two hospital ships, and these of course get nearly hit, one shell going right over one of them. The ship finally gets away after being clumsily handled; but it is bad form to back near a hospital ship. The hospital ships lie off here night and day, well within range of the Turkish batteries, which never fire on them unless a supply or ammunition ship goes near.
2 o’clock.
A heavy bombardment on our part has started. We have again begun to hammer at the doors of the Dardanelles. The sound is not unlike thousands of men beating big drums, with thousands of trains running through tunnels. The bombardment is heavier than anything previous, and is concentrated on our left centre in front of Krithia. A few French batteries are joining in, and all the British and two Monitors, the Raglan and the Abercrombie, and a light cruiser, with several destroyers, open fire as well.
The 14-inch guns of the Monitors make an ear-splitting row when they fire, and the bursting shell throws up a column of smoke and dust quite 300 feet into the air. One was plumping them in and about Krithia, and the other on the west ridge of Achi Baba.
A field battery of the Turks opens fire on one of the Monitors just off where we are sitting, and we are rather amused at their efforts; yet imagine our surprise when one of their shells actually hits the Monitor, the Raglan, without doing any more damage than denting her a little, at least as far as we can see. We hear the sound of the shell hitting her armour.