Item 03: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett telegrams, 1915 - Page 168

[Page 168]

[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 twelve stop The result of the operations in this section has greatly extended the Anzac position stop you no longer have that confined stifled feeling of too many men being crowded into a restricted area stop the line now runs north until it joins up with the 9th Corps before Anafarta stop we hold the foot hills and are established beneath the crest of Chunuk Bair some way down it is true at the top of Rhododendron Ridge stop here our men have securely dug themselves in and await events with that complacency which is characteristic of the British and Colonial soldier stop

in spite of the disappointment of being so near our first goal the men do not seem at all down hearted and express themselves as willing to have another try stop if our plans did not succeed in full it is certainly no fault of the troops who advanced from Anzac stop had the 9th Corps pressed forward its advance on the 8th and 9th a great deal of the pressure would have been taken off General Birdwood's army and it only needed just a little of that dead weight of numbers to be removed for the Anzac Corps to have made good and consolidated that short and desperate grip it got on Chunuk Bair stop
between our lines and the Turkish trenches you look out on a scene of desolation the Turks lie in masses just as they have fallen or have been thrown out of the trenches to make room for the living whilst at one point I saw a Colonial an Englishman a Maori and a Gourka all lying dead side by side marking the highest point yet reached by the Imperial forces in the peninsula

ashmead bartlett / Radcliffe Censor