James Baillie diary, 11 February 1915 - 18 February 1916 - Page 35

[Page 30]

(Saturday 7th continued)
and were left in charge of Sgt. Ward he proved himself game that night. We next charged and took a trench with a lot of opposition following them up and bayoneting all the Turks that stopped to face us and stabbing every bush in case they were hiding in there. We next drove them out of a sap and cut three of their telephone wires We got strong opposition in the shape of machine gun when we got past this We drove them out of this and advanced further across flat country we could hear the Turks getting their guns away but they were too fast for us and knew the country well Anyway we got to our position and dug ourselves in before daylight expecting counter attack but no Turks came The British and Gurkas and Sikhs advanced up towards 971 and were meeting with strong opposition. The Turks were bringing their reinforcements up in thousands and as soon as they got to top of hill The warships started into them. My God it was awful to see them getting killed where there were hundreds of men when the smoke cleared up you could not see a living soul. We are fairly secure with our position and are consolidating all the time
(Sunday 8th)
Heavy fighting on 971 Turks are making a desperate stand Can see from here the British advancing there a lot of wounded coming down from hill
(Monday 9th)
Still fighting for 971 every thing is going favourable for us The warships caught another lot of reinforcements and played havoc with them We have lost a lot of men but goodness knows what the Turks have lost we captured a good many prisoners
(Tuesday 10th)
Watching the fighting on hill with pair of glasses Our troops have reached the top on right of hill 3 pm Turks were seen in front of our trenches coming towards us we opened fire on them some of them came over with bushes on their heads cant make out what they were doing as the made no attempt to take our trenches We lost a few men including Jim McLeod who was just made a Leutenant a few days before Angus McNiel one of my mates was shot dead
(Wednesday 11th)
Very quiet this morning Turks running about in bushes in front of our [indecipherable] make fine Targets