Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them by Arthur Ruhl
page 183 of 258 (70%)
page 183 of 258 (70%)
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spot--a sight one was not likely to see more than once in a lifetime.
The great ship had rolled over like a stricken whale. Her torpedo-nets were out, and as she turned over these nets closed down on the men struggling in the water, and swept them under. He, too, expressed entire confidence in the Turk's ability to stop any farther advance and, calling an aid, sent us to the periscope, which poked its two eyes through a screen of pine branches a few yards away, and looked over the parapet and down on the first-line trenches and the sea. We were high above the Aegean and opposite the island of Imbros, which lifted its hazy blue on the western horizon, and was used as a base by part of the fleet. To the south rose the promontory of Kaba Tepe, cleared of the enemy now, our Turkish major said, and, stretching northward from it past us and Ari Burnu, the curving rim of beach held by the English. More than a month had passed since the landing, and the heavy fighting of the next few days, in which the Australians and New Zealanders, under a hail of shrapnel churning up the water between ships and shore, succeeded in getting a foothold; a month and more had passed, and, though they still held their ground, apparently they could do no more. The yellow line of their first trench twisted along the rim of the hill below us, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, and directly behind it lay the blue sea. How much elbow-room they might have between their trenches and the water one could not tell, so completely foreshortened was the space between. Cliffs rise from a narrow strip of foreshore here, however, and apparently they had pushed just over the cliff rim-- the first hill above the sea. Their tents, stores and landing-places were out of sight. |
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