The Gallipoli Letter by Keith Murdoch

which even the most careful arrangements could not make wholesome. I was on the lower deck on one of these, and the place was putrid. The men could not be allowed on shore at ports of call. One or two regiments were given route marches, but the long spell of ship life was surely in every case weakening. Those which were to land first were given landing practice at Mudros (advanced base) and Imbros (headquarters base), but many were set ashore direct from their ships at Suvla. In addition to the ordinary weakening effects of troopships was the nervous strain of expectation of submarines. Most of the men ignored this, but I was on the Beltana when a submarine was sighted and fired at, and I know that this strain did exist.
    You can imagine, then, that these fresh, raw, untried troops, under amateur officers, homesick and apprehensive, were under normal in morale when the day of landing approached. They had to be packed like sardines on the trawlers and small destroyers and vessels for the actual landing, and were kept like this for most of an afternoon and the whole of a night. Before this embarkation, they had each received three days’ supply of iron rations—biscuits and bully beef—and had filled their water bottles—one bottle to each man.
    Then in the early hours came the landing, when the life of man is at its lowest.
    I do not say that better arrangements could have been made. But I do say that in the first place to send raw, young recruits on this perilous enterprise was to court disaster; and Hamilton would have some reasonableness behind his complaints that his men let him down, if he and his staff had not at the same time let the men down with grosser wrong-doings.
    The landing was unopposed; the Turks were taken completely by surprise. But with the greatest celerity they galloped their artillery round, and opened fire also from their forts. Before the new troops had advanced any distance they were being racked with shell fire.
    I am informed by many officers that one division went ashore without any orders whatsoever. Another division, to which had been allotted the essential work of occupying the Anafarta Hills, was marched far to the left before the mistake in direction was noticed. It was then recalled, and reformed, and sent off towards the ridge. As a practical man, how much water do you think would be left in those thirsty English boys’ bottles by this time—after the night on the seas, and the hot march out, march back, and advance? Of course, not a drop. And yet the staff professes surprise that before noon the men were weak for want of water. The whole army suffered intensely from thirst during the next three days. There were many deaths from thirst. One general even assured me that the collapse of Anafarta Hills was due to thirst. Certainly these hot-blooded young men, scions of the thirstiest race in the world, were sent out into tropical heat with food calculated to engender fierce thirst, and without water. The divisional commanders have a just grievance against the general staff when they say that they were sent out not only with indefinite orders and without a good knowledge of the country over which they were to advance, but without water and with little or no knowledge of the few muddy wells existing in these parts.
    I am of course only repeating what I have been told on all hands. But you will trust me when I say that the work of the general staff in Gallipoli has been deplorable. The general idea, that of getting astride the peninsula and cutting the line of communications connecting the southern Turkish army with its bases, was good. I understand it was Birdwood’s scheme. The only criticism I have heard against it is that the great left flank movement from Anzac, which was directed against Hill 971 and Chunuk Bair while the Suvla Bay operations were in progress, was wasteful, inasmuch as the splendid Australasian troops, Gurkhas and Connaught Rangers broken to pieces