Item 03: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett telegrams, 1915 - Page 105

[Page 105]

[Telegram form – The Eastern Telegraph Company, Limited. Alexandria Station. Dated 24 Aug. 1915. 207 words. Daily Telegraph London]
[Continuation of Ashmead Bartlett's first report of the British action at Suvla Bay,
6th – 10th August]
TEN. battalions were pushed out in the plain south east a low rise was seized and occupied in front of the hill of Yilghin Burnu and our infantry [censor's deletion] now reinforced by a Territorial Division pushed forward and nearly occupied the whole of a low hill in the centre on which the enemy had a trench and from which his snipers had given us much trouble stop but about midday on the ninth a [censor's deletion] difficulty arose a strong north wind was blowing at the time and either by accident through bursting shells or by design of the Turks the shrub caught fire in several places and spread with amazing rapidity stop

the smoke and flames swept diagonally across our front and forced our infantry to abandon their advance positions stop it was a weird sight for in all directions you saw Turkish snipers and British infantry crawling out from amongst the shrub and trees and hedges where they had been lying invisible and turning their backs on one another crawling or running to get out of the track of the flames and dense black clouds of suffocating smoke stop thus for some hours these fires created a number of neutral zones
Ashmead Bartlett Radcliffe censor