Lemnos (from The History of the Fifth Battalion, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment (TA))
Saturday 4th December 1915: The adjutant of the 1st/5th
Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, dubbed the Yellow Devils for their bravery in
action on 15th August, left the Gallipoli peninsula yesterday. Orders to embark
were received at 6.30 last evening and they embarked for Mudros on the island
of Lemnos an hour before midnight. They are expected to disembark about 8.30
this morning and to march to a camp at Portianou on the other side of the bay.
Their sojourn on the peninsula lasted 115 days.
Source: X550/6/8
(1) Gallipoli
was evacuated gradually from the beginning of December until 9th January 1916.
The withdrawal was, ironically, the best planned and executed thing in the
whole campaign and casualties were surprisingly low. The whole campaign is
reckoned to have cost 174,828 Ottoman casualties (56,643 killed) and 27,169
French of whom 9,798 were killed. 142 men from Newfoundland became casualties
of whom 49 were killed and 4,779 men from British India, of whom 1,358 were
killed. These men are often forgotten as Gallipoli has become associated almost
solely with Australians and, to a lesser extent, New Zealanders. 28,150
Australians and 7,473 New Zealanders became casualties, of whom 8,709 and 2,721
respectively were killed. British casualties amounted to 120,246, of whom
34,072 were killed.
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