Item 03: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett telegrams, 1915 - Page 123

[Page 123]

[Telegram form – The Eastern Telegraph Company, Limited. Alexandria Station. Dated 24 Aug. 1915. 274 words]
[Continuation of Ashmead Bartlett's first report of the British action at Suvla Bay,
6th – 10th August]
Section 3
R.T.P. Daily Telegraph London.
Section four three August eighth stop the new craft are admirable for landing men for they draw only [censor's deletion - four feet] little water each moves under its own motor [censor's deletion - they are constructed of steel sufficiently thick to resist bullets and shrapnel and each can carry five hounred men fully equipped on deck or in their spacious holds] stop landing parties can thus approach the shore in complete cover instead being exposed in open boats towed by steam pinnaces stop each motor lighter has a kind of drawbridge which lets down over the bow along which the troops pass to reach the beach stop the arrival of these craft immensely simplified the problem of the landing stop
at Imbros for many days past the 11th Division has been practicing embarking and disembarking until every officer and every man new the exact role he had to play stop nothing had in fact been left to chance all the preperations being worked out to the minutest detail stop on August sixth the final preperations were at length complete and the main movement was proceeded by a general bombardment of the Turkish trenches around Achi Baba and in the afternoon the forty second Division made a successful attack carrying several lines of Turkish trenches stop this movement was however really in the nature of a feint to hold the enemy round the mountain and to frighten him from moving troops to reinforce his other positions stop on the morning of August sixth I was told to hold myself in readyness to embark that evening for an unknown destination which would not be [divulged?] to me until after I got on board the [censor's deletion – Minneapolis transport]