Papers relating to Sir Ian Hamilton, 1920 - Page 2

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on the night of the 10th/11th May. The Turkish right rested upon the steep cliff north-east of "Y" beach, where the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Plymouth Battalion Royal Naval Division had made their first landing. Since those days the enemy had converted the bluff into a powerful bastion from which the fire of machine-guns had held up the left of our attacks. Two gallant attempts by the Royal Munster Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers to establish a footing on this cliff on the 8th and 9th May had both of them failed. 

During the night of the 10th/11th May, the 6th Gurkhas started off to seize this bluff. Their scouts decended the cliff to the sea, worked their way for some distance through the broken ground along the sea shore and crawled hands and knees up the preciptious face of the cliff. On reaching the top they were heavily fired on. Finding that it was not possible to seize the redoubt by surprise most of them managed to make their way back under a heavy rifle and machine-gun fire.  This reconnaissance  As a surprise the enterprise had failed but as a reconnaissance it proved.