through my office that no
provision had been made by the War Office to keep up a regular supply of
artillery ammunition to the Dardanelles Expedition. The W.O. authority
appeared to have given a bonus of ammunition when the Expedition sailed,
and to have been somewhat taken aback and annoyed by the fact that a
sure and continuous supply should afterwards be demanded.

On 29th May I left G.H.Q. on appointment as Brigadier-General to command
all the artillery at Cape Helles, in which capacity I served till
September, i.e. through all the big attacks and counter-attacks of June,
July and August. In this capacity I was brought face to face with all
the deficiencies in artillery _materiel_ and ammunition, of which the
following were the most important.

Although there was only one Battery of 4.5 and one Battery of 6-in.
howitzers at Helles there was always an extreme deficiency of howitzer
H.E. ammunition. So great was the shortage that immediately on taking up
my command I found it necessary to issue a most stringent order that no
howitzer on Cape Helles was ever to fire H.E. without my personal
authority. When the Turks attacked, 18-prs. and 15-prs. were to support
the Infantry with shrapnel; howitzers were only to be used with my
personal permission and then were only to fire shrapnel. All howitzer
H.E. was to be used exclusively for supporting British attacks by
bombarding the Turkish trenches before and during such activities.
Throughout the above months, constant appeals were made to me by
Infantry Commanders to bombard the Turkish trenches with H.E. in order
to retaliate for the loss our men had suffered from the Turkish guns
using H.E. Such requests I had invariably to refuse.

There were fifty-six 18-prs. at Helles, when I assumed command on the
29th May, and subsequently they were increased to seventy-two at the end
of July. Except for 640 rounds of H.E., which was fired off during the
4th June battle, no more H.E. arrived till the end of July.

Never during my command did the total number of rounds of 18-pr.
ammunition at Helles ever reach 25,000. Before one of our attacks, with
very careful previous husbanding, the total used perhaps to reach 19,000
to 23,000. The total amount I could therefore allot justifiably for the
artillery preparation before an attack of our four British Infantry
Divisions never exceeded 12,000 rounds; as from 6,000 to 7,000 must
necessarily be kept in reserve to assist in beating off t