Anzac Cove, Ari Burnu, from John Masefield's 'Gallipoli.'
View of Anzac, looking towards Suvla.
"In this war of digging, the daily life in the trenches gives digging enough to every soldier. Men dig daily even if they do not fight. At Anzac in July the Australians had a double share of digging—their daily share in the front lines, and when that was finished their nightly share, preparing cover for the new troops. During the nights of the latter half of July the Australians at Anzac dug, roofed, and covered not less than twenty miles of dug-outs. All this work was done in their sleep time, after the normal days work of fighting, digging, and carrying up stores. Besides digging these hiding-places they carried up, fixed, hid, and filled the water-tanks which were to supply the newcomers."
Since the April 25, 1915 Allied landing of the Gallipoli peninsula, the Turkish defenders had confined the invaders to two footholds on the peninsula, one at the southern end, where British, Indian, French, and Senagalese troops had made little headway, the second at Anzac Cove, named for the men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the ANZACs who held the beach and some of the hills above it at the Cove. Just as the Allies had hoped that the invasion would lead to a breakthrough in the war by opening a new front against the Central Powers, they hoped to break the stalemate at Gallipoli by launching a new invasion, at Suvla Bay, north of Anzac. On the same day, August 7, the ANZACs would be reinforced for an advance of their own. In preparation, in July, the men dug.
Gallipoli by John Masefield by John Masefield, pp. 110, 111, publisher: William Heinemann, publication date: 1916
1915-07-26, 1915, July, Anzac Cove
