Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 210

[Page 210]

chunks after heavy rain. There are frequent landslides which carry away the bivouacs cut on thus unstable foundation on the face of the precipices and half buried men have frequently to be dug out by their comrades. The construction of the trenches presents another source of difficulty for inspite of the shill which which they have been constructed and the use of sandbags they crumble away from every day use the parapits frequently collapse or are warn away from men leaning against them to fire. Sometimes the enemy's gunners will amuse themselves knocking in a whole section with shell fire and this has to be build up again along a ridge three yards wide or even less with the enemy only a few yards off in front and with a sheer precipice of shifting sand behind. On the other hand the Turks have the same difficulties to face and whenever you look out through the trench periscopes you can see the tops of the spades and the shovels full of earth showing that they also are digging away for dear life.

I have in previous dispatches discribed the shrapnel Valley which runs up the centre of the Australia Anzac position dividing the outer from the inner perimiter of defence. Our outer line does not form a complete semi circle for the Turks hold a section right at the top of the valley from which it has been impossible to drive them. This has been ever since the landing the weak spot in our line a fact perfectly well known to the enemy who have made frequent attempts to break through but always without success. This gap is defended on the right by the position known as Quinn's Post and on the left by that known as Pope's. The ground between the two is known as Bloody Angle on account of the desperate fighting which has