Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
Australians at Anzac two days before the evacuation took place.
"By May 5 [Hamilton] had got his reinforcements from Egypt, and in addition he took six thousand men from Birdwood and put them into the British line at Cape Helles: a force of 25,000 men in all. Through most of May 6, 7, and 8 the fight went on and with the same heroic desperation as before. 'Drums and trumpets will sound the charge,' General d'Amade announced to the French, and out they went in their pale-blue uniforms and their white cork helmets, a painfully clear target against the dun-coloured earth. Each day they hoped to get to Achi Baba. Each night when they had gained perhaps 300 yards in one place and nothing in another a new attack was planned for the following day. . . . A wild unreality intervened between the wishes of the commanders and the conditions of the actual battle on the shore. The battle made its own rules, and it was useless for the general to order the soldiers to make for this or that objective; there were no objectives except the enemy himself. This was a simple exercise in killing, and in the end all orders were reduced to just one or two very simple propositions: either to attack or to hold on."
Within days of the Allied invasion of Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, neither the Turks nor the Allies could advance significantly. The opposing commanders pleaded for reinforcements. The Entente Allies were reluctant to divert men from the fighting in France. General Sir Ian Hamilton had overall command of the Allied campaign and got troops where he could find them, from Egypt and from his commanders. General Sir William Birdwood commanded the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, which had landed at Gaba Tepe — Anzac Cove — barely five miles north of the Anglo-French landing site at Cape Helles at the end of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Achi Baba was a hill 709 feet high that dominated the Allied position at Cape Helles six miles to its south.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, page 155, copyright © 1956 by Alan Moorehead, publisher: Perennial Classics 2002 (HarperCollins Publications 1956), publication date: 2002 (1956)
Anzacs, ANZACs, Gallipoli, 1915, 1915-05-05, 1915-05-06, May, Hamilton, Birdword, Cape Helles, Achi Baba
