Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 94

[Page 94]

this erstwhile popular promenade. It is just as if you had taken a house
on the Lees at Folkestone to wake up one fine morning to find shells
from Boulogne coming in your front windows. The Sea View Dwellers never foresaw this contingency. They only bit their homes to protect themselves against shells from Achi Baba now they find themselves in and awkard predicament for their dwellings being constructed on terraces along the face of the cliff cannot be built up in front and they must either face the risk or abandon them altogther.

Some have fled to the top of the cliff others have by this time become fatalists and smoke their pipes thinking of happier days in the future or living in the past. Others have sunk their pride and have descended into the valley again to make terms with those who they lately looked down upon. Many thus have a working arrangement which answers very well. When the shells are coming from Achi Baba they invite those in the valley up to Sea View and when they are coming from Asis they themselves descend to the valley and live with their friends. But here again the unhappy inhabitants of Lancashire Landing are often checkmated by the Huns firing both from Asia and Achi Baba at the same time.

This is a dirty trick as there is then little or no cover and you can only sit in a round deep hole praying that a direct hit may not put your number up for all time. I do not suppose the non combatant branches of an army have ever lived under such conditions before unless in the course of some siege. For strange though it may seem they are far more exposed than the troops in the front trenches. Day fater day night after night the officers and men of the Army Service Corps of the Army Ordanace