Item 01: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett diary, 1915-1917 - Page 221
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[Page 221]
original objective of the army, could be reached. The whole movement would in fact consist of a series of costly frontal attacks on entrenchments. Whereas had an army been able to get astride the Peninsula at Bulair or Gaba Tepe and present an entrenched front both North and South, it is difficult to see how any food or ammunition could have reached the Turks, with our submarines active in the Dardanelles. At best, they could only have fed with extreme difficulty and in all probability they would have been starved into submission. This, of course, was strategically the big plan to undertake. But I am not attempting to criticise the Military Authorities for not adopting it. To carry through successfully it would have required a far larger force than was then available and with the small force originally landed it might easily have ended in disaster.
On April 25th the army was still regarded as the auxiliary of the navy, namely, to March parallel with it up the Peninsula, making good the positions as they were won. A compromise was adopted, that is to say, the Australians were landed at Anzac to make a diversion on the Turkish flank whilst the 29th Division was to seize the southern end of the Peninsula and work its way gradually up to the Narrows. It was decided that all the advantages which might be derived from the more ambitious programme must yield in importance to the immense moral and material support which this force would de