The march of History in these wonderful months brought with it an event that stirred the world.  This was the first great landing of the British Forces on the toe of the Gallipoli Peninsula, in their attempt to win a way for the Allied Navy through the Straits of the Dardanelles.  On April 25th, 1915, as all the world knows, the men of the 29th Division came up like a sea-breeze out of the sea, and, driving the Turks and Germans from their coastal defences, swept clear for themselves a small tract of breathing room across that extremity of Turkey.  Leaping out of their boats, and crashing through a murderous fire, they won a footing on Cape Helles, and planted their feet firmly on the invaded territory.

Three Kensingtonians known to us fell dead in that costly battle.  Stanley, who tried me in the Prefects’ Room, took seven machine-gun bullets in his body, and died in a lighter as it approached the beach.  Lancaster, who in less grand years would undoubtedly have bowled for Oxford and England, lay down on W. Beach and died.  And White, the gentle giant—­Moles White, who swam so bravely in the Bramhall-Erasmus Race, was knocked out somewhere on the high ground inland.

And, almost immediately after that distant battle of the Helles beaches, in the early days of May, when England was all blossom and bud, our First Line of the Cheshires was landed on Gallipoli to support the 29th Division.  The news was all over the regiment in no time.  The First Line had gone to the Dardanelles!  Had we heard the latest?  The First Line were actually on Gallipoli!

Consider what it meant to us.  We were the Second Line, whose object was to supply reinforcing drafts to the First Line in whatever country it might be ordered to fight.  The First Line—­we were proud of the fact—­had been the first territorial division to leave England.  In September, 1914, it had sailed away, in an imposing convoy of transports escorted by cruisers and destroyers, under orders to garrison Egypt.  There it had acted as the Army of Occupation till that April day when the 29th Division laughed at the prophecies of the German experts and stormed from the AEgean Sea the beaches of Cape Helles.  Scarcely had the news electrified Egypt before the First Line received its orders to embark for Overseas.  And every man of them knew what that meant.

So all we of the 2nd Tenth seemed marked down like branded sheep for the Gallipoli front.  The Colonel was full of it.  With his elect mind that saw right into the heart of things, he quickly unveiled the poetry and romance of Britain’s great enterprise at Gallipoli.  He crowded all his young officers into his private room for a lecture on the campaign that was calling them.  Having placed them on chairs, on the carpet, on the hearth-rug, and on the fender, he seated himself at his writing-table, like a hen in the midst of its chickens, and began: 

“For epic and dramatic interest this Dardanelles business is easily top.”