Sunday May 16. Gallipoli STONE BRIDGE Bivouac

Glorious weather continues. and
also active hostilities. Divine services
had been arranged for today but
military duties caused them to be
cancelled. Turks are so well entrenched
now that tactics must approach
semi-siege warfare and we can
only hope to get forward slowly
to our present objective, the heights
of ACHI-BABA. Several officers here
who have seen service recently in
France & Belgium say that the
fighting here on the whole is more
difficult & strenous. There is no
doubt, to my mind that a more
stubborn fighter (in defence) page 60 than the Turk does not exist.

We are little afraid though
of his powers to attack and in
fact wish he would do so
more actively. I walked round
Sed-el-Bahr & Cape Hellas this
morning dodging occasional big
shells from the enemy. To the
civilian eye it would be a
wonderful sight going through the
transport & ammunition parks &
Aerodrome etc. On the beaches
are huge piles of stores, wagons
& ammunition, horses & mules in
hundreds, & gangs of men unloading
barges, constructing roads etc

And we hear from Constantinople
that we have been driven into
the sea. A splendid anchorage
is obtainable & fleets of warships
transports & small craft lie
close in to the shore. The
village & ports of Sed-el-Bahr are
a mass of crumbling ruins, but
form the base of the French forces.

The huge dismantled guns and
the twisted plate & iron work bear page 61 striking testimony to the work
of the Navy previous to the landing.
The country here now practically
a mass of excavations & “dug outs”
was very pretty, being abundant
in wild flowers vineyards & cypress
groves, and as a great admirer of
natural scenery, I cannot, even
amid the tumult of war, pass
this by without comment.

This afternoon the sound of
battle increases tho' we take little
more notice now of a blast
of artillery than of the bray of
a mule or the eternal croaking
of the frogs near my bivouac.

I wish the Frenchmen would
hunt them. We have now had
5 days out of the firing line and
expect we will soon go forward
again, being attached to the 29th
(British) Division. Our (Wg'tn Battalion)
revised list of casualties to date since
landing in Gallipoli (excluding sick)
is 4 officers & 77 men killed and
12 off. & 295 men wounded with
37 men missing (probably all casualties)