01 June 1915

IMBROS - General Sir Ian Hamilton, Headquarters, MEF, Imbros - With hard fighting, but stalemate, continuing on Gallipoli it looked like the Allies would be in for the long term. On 1st June Hamilton landed at Imbros and setup his shore-based residence.

Sir Ian Hamiltons Imbros Tent

Sketch is by Horace Moore-Jones and shows General Sir Ian Hamilton's tent at General Headquarters in Imbros, with two aircraft in the sky. Image copyright expired and in the public domain (AWM ref ART03240)

"1st June, 1915. Imbros. Came ashore and stuck up my 80-lb. tent in the middle of a sandbank whereon some sanguine Greek agriculturalist has been trying to plant wheat. We shall live the simple life; the same life, in fact, as the men, but are glad to be off the ship and able to stretch our legs.

Hard fighting in the North zone and the South. Both outposts captured by us on the 29th May at Anzac and on the French right at Helles heavily attacked. In the North we had to give ground, but not before we had made the enemy pay ten times its value in killed and wounded. Had we only had a few spare rounds of shrapnel we need never have gone back. The War Office have called for a return of my 4.5 howitzer ammunition during the past fortnight, and I find that, since the 14th May, we have expended 477 shell altogether at Anzac and Helles combined. In the South the enemy twice recaptured the redoubt taken by the French on the 29th, but Gouraud, having a nice little parcel of high explosive on hand, was able to drive them out definitely and to keep them out."

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SOURCE:
I. Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, Vol. I, (London; Edward Arnold, 1920) 260-261