Item 03: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett telegrams, 1915 - Page 166

[Page 166]

[Telegram form – The Eastern Telegraph Company, Limited. Alexandria Station. Dated 1 Sept. 1915. 250 words]
[Continuation of Ashmead Bartlet's report on the combined British/Anzac operations at Suvla Bay and Lone Pine, 6th to 10th August]
Daily Telegraph London R.T.P.
Cable five section eleven stop generals and colonials fought with rifles and bayonets alongside their troops in the firing line stop it was a fierce hand to hand struggle amongst the scrub through broken ground in which no man knew how his comrade was faring stop many commanding officer were killed including General Baldwin who had throughout these four days set a splendid example to his men stop gradually the enemy was driven back and the ground we had been obliged to abandon regained stop

throughout the day of the 10th the enemy continued his attacks with gradually lessening power but could not force our men from their hard won positions stop at nightfall the fighting gradually died down from the sheer exhaustion of both armies and the consequent impossibility of any further physical effort stop thus closed for the time being amidst these bloodstained hills the most ferocious and sustained soldier's battle since Inkerman stop but Inkerman was over in a few hours whereas Englishmen Australians New Zealanders Gourkas Sikhs and Maoris kept up this terrible combat with the Turks for four consecutive days and nights amidst hills dongas and ravines nine houndred feet above the sea to which point all water rations and ammunition had to be borne along paths which do not exist except on the map and down which every man who fell wounded had to be borne in the almost tropical heat of August in the Mediterranean stop [three lines deleted by censor]
Ashmead Bartlett / Radcliffe Censor

[Brig. Gen. A.H. Baldwin, 38th Inf. Bde]