11th Battalion Diary - 25 April 1915

The 11th Battalion boats all made for the extreme left, to the north of Ari Burnu.  The Battalion had to get past the point of Ari Burnu, where the beach receded, and consequently had about 200 yards more to row than the other boat parties.  They thus came under heavy fire while still on the water, and many casualties were inflicted before the troops reached the shelter of the land.

The boys had the greatest difficulty in getting ashore, loaded as they were with their heavy equipment.  Even those in the bows of the boats were in fairly deep water after they sprang out, and any men hopping out at the stern and thus getting totally under water had very little chance of getting ashore, and numbers must have been drowned in the dark and confusion.

When the boys reached the shore, their one desire was to get at grips with the enemy; but everything was against them from the start.  They were sodden with seawater and their equipment dragged; they had landed in unknown terrain in a strange country, which rose up stark and steep in front of them.  However, they clambered up hand over hand, and helped each other up the worst parts of the steep and precipitous cliffs.  Meanwhile, a machine gun was enfilading them and causing many casualties, and the unfortunate wounded and killed rolled down to the beach below.

Gasping and spent, the survivors reached the brow of the ridge, to be confronted with a maze of ridges and valleys – the later frequently deepening into ravines, with the general tendency of the country to rise higher and higher to the great central ridge.  Wherever the enemy were in force they always seemed to have higher ground from which to fire, and the 11th Battalion suffered heavily in the first day’s action.

BELFORD, Walter C, Legs Eleven. Being the story of the 11th Battalion (AIF) in the Great War of 1914-1918, page 69 (source 171)