made up of the undamaged
portions of one, two or more guns. Batteries often, therefore, remained
for days short of guns on account of the lack of spare parts.

When I assumed command of the artillery at Helles, there were two
Batteries of mountain guns (10-prs.) in action, but they were of a
prehistoric pattern. In 1899 the Khedive of Egypt possessed in his Army,
in which I was then serving, mountain guns which were more up-to-date in
every respect. So inaccurate were these 10-prs. that they had to be
placed close behind the front trenches lest they should hit our own
Infantry, the result being a very heavy casualty list in officers and
men amongst their Territorial personnel. Many of these lives could have
been saved, had reasonable modern weapons been supplied. These obsolete
old guns wore out so quickly that the two Batteries quickly melted into
one Battery, and when they finally left Helles for Anzac at the end of
July, I believe only 3 guns and their detachments were left in being.

As for anti-aircraft guns, they did not exist at all and the hostile
aeroplanes used to fly over and drop bombs _ad lib._ without fear of
molestation, the only saving clause being that the enemy appeared to
possess almost as few aeroplanes as the British.

In no point of their equipment did the force at Helles suffer so much in
comparison with their comrades in France as in the matter of aeroplanes
which, at the Dardanelles, were hopelessly deficient not only in the
numbers but also in quality. There were not sufficient pilots and there
were no observers at all. Brave and efficient as the naval pilots were,
they could not be expected to be of any use as artillery spotters unless
they had been thoroughly trained for this important duty. This
deficiency had to be made good at all costs by drafting young artillery
subalterns from their Batteries and sending them to the Air Force, where
their lack of training and experience in operation was at first severely
felt, although later these lads did magnificent work. Thus Batteries
were deprived of their trained subalterns just at the moment when the
latter were most required on account of the severe casualties suffered
in the landing and during the subsequent early operations. But few of
the aeroplanes were fitted with wireless and the receivers on the ground
could not take in messages over a distance longer than 5,000 yards.
Consequently, each aeroplane had to return within this radius of the