age of recall for Captain
Smedley, and with it he too clambered back over the parapet and passed
out into the night.

At 3.30 A.M. on the 7th August the two Companies toiled homewards,
having lost heavily. Davidson, a plucky Australian officer attached to
us, was among the killed. He had been in charge of a working party which
wandered in the darkness into the Turkish lines, and was there
destroyed.

After a couple of hours' sleep, we rose to take our part in the renewed
offensive. A heavy bombardment was to precede a general advance. As the
front-line trenches lay within a few yards of the Turks, they were now
practically cleared of men in order to avoid casualties from our own
gunfire. The scheme laid down for our Battalion required a north-east
advance by C and B Companies out of the narrow defile known as Krithia
nullah. A gap was therefore made overnight in the barrier that had
hitherto crossed the mouth of the defile and linked our fire trenches
with those neighbouring. A machine gun was placed at the north-west
corner of this gap under cover of the end of our fire trench. On the
south-east side of the gap, a barricade ran up a steep slope to the
trenches of other Manchesters, whose assault was to be simultaneous with
ours. Owing to the clearance of the fire trenches, the assaulting
parties had, unfortunately, to move across the open. The nullah was
twisted and partly covered by curving banks on either flank; so that it
was hoped that our men might nevertheless avoid complete exposure. The
great hope, however, was that the British guns would succeed in wrecking
the redoubt that commanded the outlet of the nullah before the infantry
moved.

We waited at the spot where the support line ran down to the nullah and
from which C Company was to emerge, while our artillery thundered
against the enemy's position. Then the hour came, and C Company, under
Chadwick (bravest of the brave), moved in single file into the nullah
and onward towards the gap in the front-line barricade and the Turkish
redoubt beyond.

B Company, under Captain J.R. Creagh, followed in their wake.

At the same time a battalion of the Manchesters, commanded by
Lieut.-Col. Darlington, was launched against the Turkish line on the
left of the redoubt, and another, under Lieut.-Col. Pilkington, against
the line on its right. The redoubt itself was at the apex of a broad
angle of trenches.

It was at once obvious that our guns had been unable to aff