"'Could you have done anything else?' I asked a Scottish Borderer, as we sat in the scrub looking towards the hill, long afterwards.
"'Ah believe,' said he, 'properly reinforced in the rear, we could 'a taken Achi Baba by twelve noon on the day o' the landin'.
"This is the opinion of a serving soldier, one of the eighty odd men still alive who won to the gently rising slopes of this formidable position, a bone in our throats for six deadly months--and there still."
Corporal J. Collins of the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers gives us a glimpse of the terrible scenes which took place on Beach W, where the men of his regiment covered themselves with glory. "In my first boat," he says, "there were thirty-eight soldiers and four sailors, and when we got near the shore the boat drifted about, so I decided to make for land. I got into the water, and, being a strong swimmer, I was able to pull one of my comrades on to my shoulder. Thus we struggled ashore. Then we stumbled across barbed wire. The sand and the water choked my rifle, and I was unable to use it when I landed, except the bayonet. We struggled through the entanglements, and made for the cliffs, while bullets were whistling and shrapnel shrieking all round us. While I was advancing a shrapnel shell whistled past my breast, tearing my ammunition pouch away, and reducing my clothes to tatters. The same shell killed some of my comrades farther in the line. Keeping on, we took the first Turkish trench."
Leading Seaman Gilligan of H.M.S. _Euryalus_ thus wrote: "We landed the Lancashire Fusiliers, thirty-five in each boat. I shall never forget it as long as I live. It was wicked, and I, like a lot more, never expected to come through it whole. There were four boats in tow of a steam pinnace, and there was no sign of the enemy until we touched the shore. Then they opened fire, strongly entrenched above us in the cliffs, with machine guns. As soon as we touched the beach we could see the wire entanglements. The fire was terrible--just like a hailstorm. I jumped out of the stern up to my arms in water, and pushed the boat in. The sergeant jumped in front of me, and got mortally wounded. The cries of the wounded were terrible. It is without equal in this war, this landing of troops under fire. The Turks drove our men right back to the beach that Sunday night. There were 38,000 Turks, and 1,100 of our fellows held them. However, we have made progress since then, and I am proud to have had a share in it."