But now a red flare went up from Lala Baba on their left, and the two battalions of Yorkshire soldiers who were advancing in that direction came under heavy rifle fire. This was the first time that Kitchener’s new civilian army had faced the enemy, and the conditions were very difficult: they had been on their feet for seventeen hours, they could see hardly more than a yard or two ahead, and they were under orders to use only their bayonets until the day broke. A third of the men and all but three of their officers were hit, but the remainder kept trudging on until they had driven the Turks off the top of the hill and had pursued them down to the salt lake on the opposite side. It was now midnight, and the survivors looked around for the third brigade which was supposed to have landed inside the bay, at a place called A Beach, and to have kept a rendezvous with them at Lala Baba. But of these others there was nothing to be seen; and so the men sat down to wait.
The Navy had been all too well justified in their dislike of the unknown waters in the bay. In the darkness the landing craft had lost their way, and those which had not fouled hidden reefs had come ashore at least a thousand yards to the south of the place where they were intended to be. It was not until well after midnight that the first troops of this third brigade began to line up on the beach, and nobody knew quite where they were or what they were supposed to do. However, the moon came up at 2 a.m. and by that pale light one column made a dash at a hill which they imagined to be Hill Ten (and which was not), while another struggled up the slopes of Kiretch Tepe to the north, and still another sat down and waited on the beach. As day began to break at 4.30 a.m. the advance everywhere had stopped. Hill Ten had still not been attacked or even found, disorganized groups were firing raggedly at any target that happened to present itself, and the utmost confusion spread along the shore. Officers everywhere were shouting to one another for information, arguing over their orders and sending off messengers who never returned. It was not the enemy fire that defeated then, for it was not very heavy, but their own physical exhaustion, the unfamiliar maps which seemed to bear no relation to the landscape, and the absence of anyone in high authority to give a clear command.
General Hammersley had come ashore soon after midnight, and he spent the remaining hours of darkness vainly trying to find out what was going on. It was not until dawn that he realized that, far from reaching the hills, his soldiers had merely seized the two arms of the bay.
General Stopford was in somewhat easier circumstances. On the voyage across from Imbros he had confided to Admiral Christian his misgivings about the whole adventure, but his spirits rose as they approached the coast. Very little firing was to be heard on shore, and it even seemed that the landing had been made unopposed. In the very early hours of the morning the Jonquil dropped anchor just inside the bay. The night was warm, and the General had his mattress brought up on deck close under the bridge; and there he went to sleep. No one was sent ashore to inquire for news, no one came out to the Jonquil from the beach, and no message was sent to G.H.Q. at Imbros. It was not until 4 a.m. that Commander Unwin, who had been very busy through the night, came on board to urge the Admiral that the monitors should open fire to hearten the troops who were still held up in confusion on the shore.
On Imbros Hamilton and his staff were finding the absence or news almost insupportable. The General kept pacing back and forth from his hut to the signals tent, and although Anzac and Helles sent him their news, from Suvla there was not a word. The cable ship Levant had gone off with the invasion fleet, paying out its cable on the way, and it was arranged that the first message that was to come through would announce that the troops were ashore. There was a dial face in the signals tent at the Imbros end of the cable, and through the midnight hours the headquarters staff kept watching it. At last at 2 a.m. the needle on the dial began to move and a telegraphist spelt out the message: ‘A little shelling at A has now ceased. All quiet at B.’ There was no signature — it was simply the signaller on board the Levant passing a private message to his mate at the Imbros end — but it did at least serve to reassure the Commander-in-Chief’s mind. ‘Now, thank God,’ he wrote, ‘the deadliest of the perils is past. The New Army are fairly ashore.’
It was quite true. Nearly 20,000 men had been landed and the casualties had been very light. This time Liman had been caught completely off his guard. It was also unfortunately true that at this moment all three senior British generals — Hammersley at Suvla, Stopford in the Jonquil and Hamilton on Imbros — were in almost total ignorance of what was really happening, and the hills which they (or Hamilton, at any rate) had so much hoped to have by dawn, were still several miles away. But even so the situation was not too dangerous; the confusing darkness of the night had gone, no Turkish reinforcements had yet arrived, and there was still time for the Suvla troops to bring help to Birdwood in his frightful struggle for Sari Bair. All depended on the dispatch with which Stopford disentangled his forces on the shore and got them moving inland.
It had been Stopford’s original intention to go ashore with his headquarters on the morning of August 7, but he changed his mind when he heard that his signals unit had not yet arrived. He could better control the battle, he decided, from the decks of the Jonquil, and it was here, soon after daybreak, that he received a visit from Brigadier-General Hill, the commander of the 6,000 troops who had just come in from Mytilene. Hill was not the least bewildered man at Suvla that morning. For nearly a month he and his men had been incarcerated in their transports, and they might have been living on the moon for all they knew about Gallipoli. On the previous day they had received orders to move from their peaceful anchorage in Mytilene harbour. They had no idea where they were going, no plan had been given to the Brigadier, and no map had been shown to him. He was surprised therefore to wake on this hot sunny morning and find himself on a strange coast with hostile shells falling into the sea around him; and he now wished to know what he was to do.
Stopford, on the advice of Unwin, was inclined to think that Hill had better get his ships out of the shellfire in Suvla Bay and go round to the safe outer beach beyond Nibrunesi Point where he could attach himself to General Hammersley for the time being. This would mean that the men would have to march for a mile or more under enemy fire to get back to their appointed landing-place inside the bay; still, it could not be helped. The two generals were still debating the matter when Keyes burst in upon them. Keyes had observed the hesitations and delays on the shore, and he had come across from the Chatham ‘in a fever of resentment at these leisurely proceedings’ to say that shellfire or no shellfire Hill should land his men inside the bay at once. It was decided, however, that another change of plan would cause too much confusion, and so Hill went off with his men around Nibrunesi Point. Arriving on shore his orders were instantly countermanded by Hammersley; instead of marching north towards Hill Ten he was now to march east towards a rise known as Chocolate Hill, where the Turks were still entrenched. Later on these orders were again cancelled. Still later the plans were altered again.
It was typical of much else that happened on this day. Indeed, it requires a more than average interest in the minutiae of military history to follow the marches and the counter-marches that now began, the stream of orders, each one cancelling out the last, the misunderstandings between the various headquarters, the long silences and the sudden frantic changes of front. The best part of two divisions had now come ashore, the 11th under Hammersley and the 10th under Mahon, and hardly anyone was where he was supposed to be. Companies, battalions and even whole brigades were hopelessly mixed up together, and any resolute action that did occur was usually the work of some junior commander who took affairs into his own hands on a limited front.