Viewed from the sea, the coast chosen for the new landing seems comparatively flat and gentle, seemingly, though not really, easy to land upon, but with no good military position near it. It looks as though once, long ago, the sea had thrust far inland there, in a big bay or harbour stretching from the high ground to the north of Suvla to the left of the Anzac position. This bay, if it ever existed, must have been four miles long and four miles across, a very noble space of water, ringed by big, broken, precipitous hills, into which it thrust in innumerable creeks and combes. Then (possibly) in the course of ages, silt brought down by the torrents choked the bay, and pushed the sea further and further back, till nothing remained of the harbour but the existing Suvla Bay and the salt marsh (dry in summer). The hills ringing Suvla Bay and this flat or slightly rising expanse which may once have been a part of it, stand (to the fancy) like a rank that has beaten back an attack. They are high and proud to the north, they stand in groups in the centre, but to the south, where they link on to the broken cliffs of the Anzac position, they are heaped in tumbling precipitous disordered bulges of hill, cut by every kind of cleft and crumpled into every kind of fold, as though the dry land had there been put to it to keep out the sea. These hills are the scene of the bitterest fighting of the battle.
Although these hills in the Suvla district stand in a rank, yet in the centre of the rank there are two gaps where the ancient harbour of our fancy thrust creeks far inland. These gaps or creeks open a little to the south of the north and south limits of Suvla Bay. They are watered, cultivated valleys with roads or tracks in them. In the northern valley is a village of some sixty houses called Anafarta Sagir, or Little Anafarta. In the southern valley is a rather larger village of some ninety houses called Biyuk Anafarta, or Great Anafarta. The valleys are called after these villages.
Between these valleys is a big blunt-headed jut or promontory of higher ground, which thrusts out towards the bay. At the Suvla end of this jut, about 1,000 yards from the bight of the Salt Marsh, it shoots up in three peaks or top knots two of them united in the lump called Chocolate Hill, the other known as Scimitar Hill or Hill 70; all, roughly, 150 feet high. About a mile directly inland from Chocolate Hill is a peak of about twice the height, called Ismail Oglu Tepe, an abrupt and savage heap of cliff, dented with chasms, harshly scarped at the top, and covered with dense thorn scrub. This hill is the southernmost feature in the northern half of the battlefield. The valley of Great Anafarta, which runs east and west below it, cuts the battlefield in two.
The southern side of the Great Anafarta valley is just that disarrangement of precipitous bulged hill which rises and falls in crags, peaks and gulleys all the way from the valley to Anzac. Few parts of the earth can be more broken and disjointed than this mass of precipice, combes and ravines. A savage climate has dealt with it since the beginning of time, with great heats, frosts and torrents. It is not so much a ridge or chain of hills as the manifold outlying bastions and buttresses of Sari Bair, from which they are built out in craggy bulges parted by ravines. It may be said that Sari Bair begins at Gaba Tepe (to the south of the Anzac position) and stretches thence northeasterly towards Great Anafarta in a rolling and confused five miles of hill that has all the features of a mountain. It is not high. Its peaks range from about 250 to 600 feet; its chief peak (Koja Chemen Tepe) is a little more than 900 feet. Nearly all of it is trackless, waterless and confused, densely covered with scrub (sometimes with forest) littered with rocks, an untamed savage country. The southwestern half of it made the Anzac position, the northeastern and higher half was the prize to be fought for.
It is the watershed of that part of the Peninsula. The gulleys on its south side drain down to the Hellespont; those upon its north side drain to the flat land which may once have been submerged as a part of Suvla Bay. These northern gulleys are great savage irregular gashes or glens running westerly or northwesterly from the hill bastions. Three of them, the three nearest to the northern end of the Anzac position, may be mentioned by name: Sazli Beit Dere, Chailak Dere, and Aghyl Dere. The word Dere means watercourse; but all three were bone dry in August when the battle was fought. It must be remembered that in the trackless Peninsula a watercourse of this kind is the nearest approach to a road, and (to a military force) the nearest approach to a covered way. All these three Deres lead up the heart of the hills to those highlands of Sari Bair where we wished to plant ourselves. From the top of Sari Bair one can look down on the whole Turkish position facing Anzac, and see that position not only dominated but turned and taken in reverse. One can see (only three miles away) the only road to Constantinople, and (five miles away) the little port of Maidos near the Narrows. To us the taking of Sari Bair meant the closing of that road to the passing of Turk reinforcements, and the opening of the Narrows to the fleet. It meant victory, and the beginning of the end of this great war, with home and leisure for life again, and all that peace means. Knowing this, our soldiers made a great struggle for Sari Bair, but Fate turned the lot against them. Sari was not to be an English hill, though the flowers on her sides will grow out of English dust forever. Those who lie there thought, as they fell, that over their bodies our race would pass to victory. It may be that their spirits linger there at this moment, waiting for the English bugles and the English singing, and the sound of the English ships passing up the Hellespont.
Among her tumble of hills, from the Anzac position to Great Anafarta, Sari Bair thrusts out several knolls, peaks and commanding heights. Within the Anzac position, is the little plateau of Lone or Lonesome Pine to be described later. Further to the northeast are the heights known as Baby 700 and Battleship Hill, and beyond these, still further to the northeast, the steep peak of Chunuk Bair. All of these before this battle were held by the Turks, whose trenches defended them. Lone Pine is about 400 feet high, the others rather more, slowly rising, as they go northeast, but keeping to about the height of the English Chilterns. Chunuk Bair, the highest of these, is about 750 feet. Beyond Chunuk, half-a-mile further to the northeast, is Hill Q, and beyond Hill Q a very steep deep gulley, above which rises the beautiful peak, the summit of Sari, known as Koja Chemen Tepe. One or two Irish hills in the wilder parts of Antrim are like this peak, though less fleeced with brush. In height, as I have said, it is a little more than 900 feet, or about the height of our Bredon Hill. One point about it may be noted. It thrusts out a great spur or claw for rather more than a mile due north; this spur, which is much gullied, is called Abd-el-Rahman Bair.
For the moment, Chunuk Bair is the most important point to remember, because—
(a) It was the extreme right of the prepared Turk position.
(b) The three Deres mentioned a couple of pages back have their sources at its foot and start there, like three roads starting from the walls of a city on their way to the sea. They lead past the hills known as Table Top and Rhododendron Spur. Close to their beginnings at the foot of Chunuk is a building known as The Farm, round which the fighting was very fierce.
The "idea" or purpose of the battle was "to endeavour to seize a position across the Gallipoli Peninsular from Gaba Tep to Maidos, with a protected line of supply from Suvla Bay."