Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 87
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[Page 87]
trench from which he delivers constant bomb attacks. Thus there is continual fighting for days after a position has been won before it is consolidated and properly held. Scnes of desperate fighting were plainly visible all around our front line. On a small rise a little to the left lay half a dozen of our men killed in the final advance who it had been impossible to get at and bury.
Right in front a line of Khaki figures lay in perfect order only a few yards away yet the sniping is so heavy that even at night it is almost impossible to bring them in. Further up the ravine lay heaps of Turkish dead piled togther who had fallen in the big counter attack. In a gorse patch further to the left lay a further large number of the enemy mixed up with some of our men for there seems to have been a general melee in the open at dawn on the twenty ninth when our men issued from their trenches and hunted the enemy out of the gorse killing large numbers of them.
The weary troops warn out with fighting and digging are now relieved and I make my way down the gruesome valley with them. They snatch at the tea which is handed them fromthe Dixies and drink it in huge gulps. Tea is the mainstay of our soldiers. They will take any quantity and it seems to keep them going better than anything else. Thus revived they pass on down the valley to their billets and throwing off their kits hurl themsrlves on the ground and inspite of the s shells and bullets the sand and heat the stenches and above all the millions of flies they are no sooner prone than asleep for they know on the following day or it maybe that same night they will have to return to their ceaseless vigilence and digging.