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[Page 144]

It was thus evident that we two were intended to witness the new landing the destination of which was not to be disclosed to us until after we had got on board the Minneapolis which was to convey us to our destination

Saturday August 7th
This day the 11th Corps and two Brigades of the 10th were embarked at Imbros on crusiers trawlers transports and placed in the new Motor Barges to be conveyed to some unknown but easily guessable destination on the bloodstained shores of Gallipoli. It was a fine sight to see the men embark and the majority of them seemed cheery enough delighted to at length embark on the great enterprise afters so much delay and hard preperation. But to me it was a sad and pathetic sight. How few had nany realisation whatsoever of what war really is. How many who were now singing singing light heartidly would be dead before the sun again rose.

How many would eventually survive this awful ordeal before them. How many would ever have enlisted at all had they had the faintest anticipation of the horrors of modern warfare under conditions such as exist in Gallipoli and handled by incompetent generals. Everything seemed to me at this eleventh hour to be against us. The hot weather the enormous packs our men carry the shortage of water, the unknown character of the troops the numbers of the enemy and above all the difficulties of a totally unknown and unexplored ground the only guide to which are hopelessly inaccurate maps which are being constantly changed as fresh discoveries are made. I also placed little reliance on the generals and staffs of these new formations and still less on the effect of the fire of the monitors and crusiers guns. On the previous day Sir Ian

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