Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 90

[Page 90]

houndreds of horses were tethered in long rows fully exposed to view. Anyone who had constructed for himself a bombproof shelter was laughed at for his trouble for then they were regarded as superflous. The beaches were piled with stores dumped from the transports waiting to be sorted out and distributed. You would see great piles of biscuits tinned meat vegetables petroleum hay and ammunition packed side by side on the foreshore and all day the sweating beach parties toiled at unloading lighters the contents of which were distributed by the Army Service Corps to the dumping grounds' of the various brigades.

The work never stopped. An occasional shrapnel of which no one took any notice was the only interference in those halcyon days although there were not wanting those who wondered why the enemy did not concentrate his attention more on the beaches which presented such a grand and crowded target to the gunner. Everyone who was present will remember that afternoon about the twentieth of May when suddenly out of a blue sky the Turks opened their first great bombardment of W Beach with two heavy guns probably six inch placed on either side of Achi Baba.

These high explosive shells burst with a tremendous detonation throwing out huge clouds of black smoke and splintering into houdreds of jagged fragments. Three out of every four burst on contact with the ground and the others in the air for the enemy employed this method to gauge the range. The toilers on the Beach ceased their labours to gauze in amazement on this new but not altogther unexpected phenomenon. For a new problem had thus suddenly arisen which no one had provided against. There were practically no dug outs or bombproofs and the few who had forseen this contingency now had the laugh of their