August 22nd
We did not attack at dawn, and so the 88th have not been in action. We are as we were—yesterday’s battle is not to be recorded as a victory for us. Machine guns again from right, left, and centre fired from behind great boulders of stone and hidden hillocks covered with gorse, and wave after wave of our men were mown down as with a scythe. Twice we captured the Burnt Hill, but twice were driven off, and Burnt Hill remains Turkish. The Yeomanry were unable to get to grips with the enemy: but for gallantry in that march from Chocolate Hill to our front line, four hundred yards in front across the open in the daylight, under a hail of shrapnel and machine gun bullets, their behaviour could not have been excelled.
Their officers represent the best blood of England, and their men good old country blood of the hunting and farmer class of Old England, with many a man of good birth in the ranks. How could such men behave otherwise than gallantly? To-night I take up the remainder of D.H.Q. kit to their new quarters, not so far forward as Chocolate Hill, to a rocky hillock covered by gorse, inland from the mainland, a distance of about a mile in a line with our promontory. The place, if found out by John Turk, will prove to be a perfect shell-trap, and shells bursting on solid rock will burst “some.” They will be foolish to stay there.