Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 208

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[Page 208]

In spite of the difficulties of the ground the Germans have from the first made more strenous efforts to drive the Australians into the sea than to drive the British troops off the southern end of Gallipoli. They realised that although they could not bring the same concentration of guns to bear or develope an attack on the stereotyped German plan that there chances of success were greater at Anzac and promised more decisive results on account of the peculiar nature of the ground to be defended, and the comparatively small amount of assistance the guns of the warships could lend the defenders. You cannot make successive lines of trenches strengthened by redoubts at vulnerable points so that if one position is taken the enemy merely finds himself confronted by another equally formidable behind. On these razor backed lines of hills many of which are so narrow that there is barely room for a trench which must be preched on the edge of a sheer precipice, you must takeup your position and either hold it or be annhillated and pushed over the precipice behind.

In places there is no room for any support trenches and the only line of retreat open to those in the firing line is to let themselves down the face of the precipice with the assistance of ropes or else by narrow tortuous paths then to dross the valley at the back and climb up the steep almost inaccessable slopes of the second line of defence at the back of which is the crowded beach and the open sea. It can be easily understood how few would survive such a journey with a victorious enemy firing at them from the captured position they have just abandoned. From the very first the Colonials realised the nature of their task and have concentrated all their efforts on

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