Twenty-four hours after the _River Clyde_ runs ashore there are but the survivors of the Dublin and the Munster Fusiliers and two companies of the Hampshire Regiment on the beach, and they are still crouching beneath the shelter of the sandy ridge. Early in the morning the _Cornwallis_, _Albion_, and _Queen Elizabeth_ come to the rescue and begin a heavy bombardment of the enemy. Under cover of this bombardment the men on the beach push up the slopes on the bluff under a most galling fire, and capture the village, a fort, and a hill. The landing can now go forward. By the evening of Tuesday, the 27th, Beach V is in working order.
The whole scene on the beach reminds you of a gigantic shipwreck. It looks as if the whole army with its stores had been washed ashore after a great gale, or had saved themselves on rafts. All this work is carried on under an incessant shrapnel fire which sweeps the trenches and hills. The shells are frequently bursting ten or twelve at the same moment, making a deafening noise, and plastering the foreshore with bullets. The only safe place is close under the cliff, but every one is rapidly becoming accustomed to the shriek of the shells and the splash of bullets in the water, and the work goes on as if there was not a gun within miles.
Before I conclude this account of the landing I must say a word as to the part played by the French in the operations. Their duty was to land on the Asiatic shore at Kum Kale, and engage the batteries so that they could not interfere with the landings at Beaches V and S. During a skirmish which took place on the height at Kum Kale and on the Trojan plain the French took 500 prisoners, and would have captured more had there been room for them in the boats. This French diversion enabled trawlers to land 700 men of the 2nd South Wales Borderers at Beach S. A stiff little fight followed; but the Welshmen gained the top of the cliff, and digging themselves in, managed to hold their own until the position was taken over by the French. Their landing had only cost them fifty casualties. A company was also put ashore at Camber, a little boat harbour nestling just east and under the ruined fort of Sedd-ul-Bahr. This little force, however, met with such a fierce fire that it could make no progress up the steep cliffs towards the village, and had to be withdrawn.