June 28th
A beautiful summer morning. This morning is the morning of a battle. We are going to try to take a Turkish redoubt on our extreme left, and to push our line forward on the left, so as to curl somewhat round Krithia. We call the redoubt “The Boomerang Fort.”
H.M.S. Talbot comes in with destroyers and mine-sweepers, and a Monitor—the Abercrombie, I think—and they take up positions off Gully and “Y” Beaches on the West Coast.
A bombardment begins at 9 a.m., as I am issuing rations, the Talbot and two or three destroyers hurling over their large shells in an enfilading fire on to the Turkish trenches and the redoubt, while all our guns on shore, with the help of the French heavies and the now invaluable little “75’s,” join in the concert.
At 10 a.m., issuing finished, I take my glasses and walk along the cliff, taking up a position on the side of an extra piece of high ground, and sit comfortably there with my back to it. Two 60-pounders behind me are firing away at the same target, at which all the guns on land and sea are concentrating their awful fire, a target of not more than fifteen hundred yards of the Turkish line, with the little redoubt at the back. Shells—large, small, black, yellow, and white—burst in hellish confusion and awful chaos, while Turkish batteries, raised to fury, reply, first on to one battery, then another. But their fire seems controlled by a flurried brain, for the shells burst harmlessly, high in the air, or, except over our first line, of which they have the range, accurately on no targets at all.
Destroyers pour in broadsides, then swoop round, making a circle, and take up a new position, letting forth viperous rounds of broadside once more. A captive sausage-balloon on a tramp ship sails high in the air, well out to sea, spotting for the Talbot and the destroyers. It is by far the most terrific and mighty bombardment that I have seen, and, I think, appears to be so because of the large amount of artillery concentrated on to so small a target.