BACK TO GALLIPOLI.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16411, 3 January 1919, Page 7

BACK TO GALLIPOLI.

RELICS OP A GLORIOUS PAST.

It is one of the fateful turns brought about by the cessation of war that our troops stand once more on tho soil of Gallipoli, says a London paper. Describing the new landing there, in a despatch sent from Lemnos, Mr H. Collinson Owen writes:— Tho contrast between this landing on November 9th, and that other famous and heroic one of 1915 was as great as can bo imagined. Our men landed on a deserted peninsula, peopled only by British dead and tilled by great memories that will livo so long as our race endures. They stepped ashore immediately beneath the bows of the River Clyde, that gaunt and battered tramp, from out of whose sides our men streamed under a storm of machine-gun bullets. But there was nothing to oppose the landing this time. On the contrary, at tho summit of the steeply rising beach, which we captured at such heavy cost, stood a little group of Turks looking down quietly on British troops disembarking. They wero Turkish artillerymen waiting to hand over the heavy guns of Capo Holies, which havo for long been waiting ready in anticipation of a renewed British attack on tho Dardanelles. We loft Mudros at four in the morning to seo the landing, and arrived off Capo Helles about nine. Later in the day. up towards the Narrows, we saw the remains of the submarine El 5, which ran ashore when trying to ascend the Straits, and was gallantly torpedoed from a launch by our own men under heavy fire. A little further up was the rusty bottom of the Turkish batloship Messudiyeh, looking like an immense turtle, and marking ono of our submarine successes, that caused much consternation to the enemy at tho time. At various times we passed over deep waters that concealed tho remains of sunken British and French battleshipsj the Ocean. Irresistible, Majestic, Goliath, Triumph, and Bouvet—a small part of tho price wo paid in our endeavour to force tho Dardanelles, ana give Russia the help she had so urgently asked for.

Wo anchored just off the beach where the ltivor Clyde was'run ashore, immediately outside the breakwater formed by the stripped skeleton of an ancient French batleship Massena, and an old hulk of a Messagerie steamer. A motor-boat took us ashore, and we passed under tho sides of the scarred and gallant old tramp. The wooden gangway that led down to the lighters waiting alongside and down which the very first men rrho landed on Galfipoli ran or stumbled is still intact, and it was just beyond this stairway down to death and glory that we stepped ashore from the launch.

It was strango, indeed, to put foot on that narrow shore, realising hjjw much we had paid to take it and find it now completely deserted. Turkish troops occupying the peninsula had bcon removed some days before, and, for the time not a single Turk was to bo seen. V B&ach along to Cape llelles, and so to W Beach; is as unlovely and barreA a strip of coast-line as can be imnginod. One wondered again how wo haa ever been able to land on it, and how we had been able to live and remain there. Above us to our right were the remains of the old fort of Sedd-el-Bahr. which tho Fleet knocked, to pieces in the first bombardment.