So all this seemed sheer waste. Thousands of lives wasted—thousands of armless and legless cripples sent back—for nothing. The troops soon realised that it was now hopeless. You can't “kid” a great body of men for long. It became utterly sickening—the inactivity—the waiting—for nothing. And every day we lost men. Men were killed by snipers as they went up to the trenches. The Turkish snipers killed them when they went down to the wells for water.
The whole thing had lost impetus. It came to a standstill. It kept on “marking time,” and nothing appeared to move it.
In the first three days of the landing it wanted but one thing to have marched us right through to Constantinople—it wanted, dash!
It didn't want a careful, thoughtful man in command—it wanted dash and bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a success—a brilliant, blinding success—but it stuck at the very moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't “come off”—and only just. But a man with dash, a devil-may-care sort of leader, could have cut right across on Sunday, August the 8th, and brought off a staggering victory.
CHAPTER XIX. THE RETREAT
It happened on the left of Pear-tree Gully.
Pear-tree Gully was a piece of ground which neither we nor the Turks could hold. It was a gap in both lines, swept by machine-gun fire and haunted by snipers and sharp-shooters.
We had advanced right up behind the machine-gun section, which was hidden in a dense clump of bushes on the top of a steep rise.
The sun was blazing hot and the sweat was dripping from our faces. We were continually on the look-out for wounded, and always alert for the agonised cry of “Stretcher-bearers!” away on some distant knoll or down below in the thickets. Looking back the bay shimmered a silver-white streak with grey battleships lying out.