[1] Robert W. Service.




CHAPTER XIV

HOLDING ON AND NIBBLING

There are people who think that the Australian dash petered out with
that one supreme effort of landing. We had achieved the impossible in
landing--why did we not in the many months we were there, do the
comparatively easy thing and advance? Surely, now that we had stores
and equipment and artillery, we could more easily drive the Turks out
of their trenches. So many seem to think that so much was done on that
first day, and so little thereafter.

But the Peninsula is not a story of mere impetuosity and dash, it is a
story of endurance as well. As a matter of fact, those eight months of
holding on were as great a miracle as the landing. There is a limit to
the physical powers even of supermen. These men were not content with
the small strip of ground that they held, and they did attack and
defeat the Turks opposing them again and again, but as soon as a
Turkish army was beaten there was ever another fresh one to take its
place. The Turks could not attack us at one time with an army
outnumbering us by ten to one, not because they had not the troops, but
because there was not room enough. As a matter of fact, that little
army (only reinforced enough to fill up the gaps) defeated five Turkish