Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 209
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[Page 209]
making their fire trenches impregnable. From these they have never yet been driven, and the period of danger may now be said to be passed. They have sometimes lost a section of a trench but the Turks have invariably been driven out again with heavy loss. The enemy had his great chance the night of the landing April 25th when the Colonials exhausted by a long days's fighting and short of ammunition and without water found themselves lining these hills without trenches and exposed to a deadly shrapnel fire. They set their teeth and held on thus saving themselves from an unparralled disaster for it would have been impossible to have got them off the shore. On the following morning Monday April 26th and throughout the whole of that day the Turks did their utmost to drive them into the sea but were repulsed with the assistance of the guns of the warships for we had not a single field gun ashore.
The last great attempt to make a general assault on the Anzac position was on May 18th 19th which was an utter fiasco. But it must not be supposed that since that date comparative quiet has reigned along the lines. There has in fact been continous heavy fighting involving heavy casualties to both sides. Local attacks and counter attacks, incessant bomb throwing and mining and constant digging of new and the renewing of old trenches have kept the Australians and New Zealanders fully occupied and have brought to them an invaluable experience of this kind of warfare The soil of these hills is extremely soft and sandy being held togther on the surface by the thick shrubb, but in places there are large bear patches which crumble at the touch and at the tread and which is washed down itno the valleys in huge