On the evening of the 19th the Turks by a fierce attack, managed to get into an awkward salient which had remained in our hands after June 4. For some time there was great difficulty in recovering this, but the 5th Royal Scots and a company of the Worcesters, led by Lieut.-Colonel Wilson of the former regiment, made a glorious attack, and drove out the Turks.
Of the Royal Scots, one can add nothing but that they are Edinburgh Territorials brought in by the fortune of war to make the twelfth regiment of the immortal 29th Division whose deeds since April 25 might have stirred the ghost of Homer to sing their valour.
Mention has been made already of the difficulties that oppose our advance upon the two flanks. On June 21 it was determined to straighten the line upon the extreme right, and at 1.30 A.M. the preliminary bombardment began. The dawn had been clear, but soon a curtain of silver, through which gleamed the ghost of the rising sun, hung over the Kereves Dere. This was the smoke of bursting shells. Slowly as the sun climbed up the curtain became more substantial. Then it seemed to droop and sweep along the hollows like a vanishing mist of dawn, and during a respite the thin blue smoke of the bivouac fires came tranquilly up into the still air. The respite was very brief, and the bombardment began again with greater fierceness than before. The 75's drummed unceasingly. The reverberation of the 125's and of the howitzers shook the observation post. Over the Kereves Dere, and beyond, upon the sloping shoulders of Achi Baba, the curtain became a pall. The sun climbed higher and higher. All that first mirage of beauty had disappeared, and there was nothing but the monstrous shapes of bursting shells, giants of smoke that appeared one after another along the Turkish lines. All through the morning the cannonade went on.
By noon the Second Division of the French had on the left stormed and captured all the Turkish trenches of the first two lines. Even the Haricot Redoubt, with its damnable entanglements and its maze of communicating trenches, was in French hands. On the right, however, the First Division, after reaching their objective, had been counter-attacked so effectively that they had fallen back. Again they advanced; again they took the trenches; again they were driven out. It began to look as if the victory upon the left would be fruitless, that the position would become an untenable salient and the Haricot Redoubt revert to the enemy.
At this moment a message was sent to say that the trenches must be recaptured, and, when recaptured, held. There were still five hours of daylight for this battle of the longest day. British guns and howitzers were asked for and were lent at once. The bombardment was resumed throughout that afternoon, and at half-past five it seemed as if every gun on earth were pouring shells on the Turkish lines.
At six o'clock the third assault was delivered. In one trench there was a temporary shortage of ammunition, but the enemy fought even with stones and sticks and fists. A battalion came hurrying up from the Turkish right to reinforce it, was caught on open ground by the drumming 75's, and it melted away. Six hundred yards of Turkish trenches were taken, and still the bombardment was continued in order to ward off the counter-attack that was anticipated.
The smoke of the shells, which at dawn had been ethereal, almost translucent, was now, in the sunset, turbid and sinister, yet the sunset was very splendid, flaming in crimson streamers over Imbros, tinting the east with rosy reflections and turning the peaks of Asia to sapphires. It had a peculiar significance on this longest day of the year, crowning as it did those precious five hours of daylight that, for the French, had been fraught with such achievement. Slowly the colour faded out, and now, minute by minute, the flashes of the guns became more distinct; the smoke was merged in the gathering dusk, and away over the more distant Turkish lines the bursts of shrapnel came out like stars against the brief twilight. One knew the anxiety there would be in the darkness that now was falling upon this 21st of June, but in the morning we heard gladly that the enemy's counter-attacks had failed, and that our Allies were indeed firmly established.
The Turkish casualties were at least 7,000. One trench, 200 yards long and 10 feet deep, was brimming over with the dead. They were valiant those dead men. French officers who have fought in the West say that, as a fighting unit, one Turk is worth two Germans; in fact, with his back to the wall, the Turk is magnificent. The French casualties were marvellously few considering what a day it had been, what an enemy was being attacked, and how much had been gained.
The right of the line now commands Kereves Dere, and the profile of Achi Baba seems to write itself less solidly against the sky.