It was not an easy task to remove large numbers of men, guns, and animals from positions commanded by the Turk observers and open to every cruising aeroplane. But, by ruse, and skill, and the use of the dark, favoured by fine weather, the work was done, almost without loss, and, as far as one could judge, unsuspected.
Had the Turks known that we were going from Anzac and Suvla, it is at least likely that they would have hastened our going, partly that they might win some booty, which they much needed, or take a large number of prisoners, whose appearance would have greatly cheered the citizens of Constantinople. But nearly all those of our army who were there felt, both from observation and intelligence, that the Turks did not know that we were going. As far as men on one side in a war can judge of their enemies, they felt that the Turks were deceived, completely deceived, by the ruses employed by us, and that they believed that we were being strongly reinforced for a new attack. Our soldiers took great pains to make them believe this. Looking down upon us from their heights, the Turks saw boats leaving the shoreapparently empty, and returning apparently full of soldiers. Looking up at them from our position, our men saw how the sight affected them. For the twelve days during which the evacuation was in progress at Anzac and Suvla, the Turks were plainly to be seen digging everywhere to secure themselves from the feared attack. They dug new lines, they brought up new guns, they made ready for us in every way. On the night of the 19th and 20th of December, in hazy weather, at full moon, our men left Suvla and Anzac unmolested.
It was said by Dr. Johnson that no man does anything consciously for the last time without a feeling of sadness. No man of all that force passed down those trenches, the scenes of so much misery and pain and joy and valour and devoted brotherhood. without a deep feeling of sadness. Even those who had been loudest in their joy at going were sad. Many there did not want to go, but felt that it was better to stay, and that then, with another 50,000 men, the task could be done, and their bodies and their blood buy victory for us. This was the feeling even at Suvla, where the men were shaken and sick still from the storm; but at Anzac the friendly little kindly city, which had been won at such cost in the ever-glorious charge on the 25th, and held since with such pain, and built with such sweat and toil and anguish, in thirst, and weakness, and bodily suffering, which had seen the thousands of the 13th Division land in the dark and hide. and had seen them fall in with the others to go to Chanak, and had known all the hopeand farvour, all the glorious resolve, and all the bitterness and disappointment of the unhelped attempt, the feeling was far deeper. Officers and men went up and down the well-known gullies moved almost to tears by the thought that, the next day, those narrow acres so hardly won and all those graves of our people so long defended would be in the Turks" hands.
They had lost no honour. They were not to blame that they were creeping off like thieves in the night. Had others (not of their profession), many hundreds of miles away, but been as they, as generous, as wise, as far-seeing, as full of sacrifice, those thinned companies, with the look of pain in their faces, and the mud of the hills thick upon their bodies, would have given thanks in Santa Sophia three months before. They had failed to take Gallipoli. and the mine-fields still barred the Hellespont, but they had fought a battle such as has never been seen upon this earth. What they had done will become a glory for ever, wherever the deeds of heroic, unhelped men are honoured and pitied and understood. They went up at the call of duty, with a bright banner of a battle-cry, against an impregnable fort. Without guns, without munitions, without help, and without water to drink, they climbed the scarp, and held it by their own glorious manhood, quickened by a word from their chief. Now they were giving back the scarp, and going out into new adventures, wherever the war might turn.
John Masefield, in Gallipoli
General Notes.-Why did the Allies leave the Peninsula? Discuss the question, Were the Turks wholly unaware of the projected evacuation? Chanak is a hill which was stormed by the New Zealanders on the night of the 6th of August, 1915. Santa Sophia is a famous mosque in Constantinople. The name means "holy wisdom." Write an essay on "Anzac: Gains and Losses."
