THE FIGHT FOR ACHI BABA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3983, 16 July 1915, Page 3

THE FIGHT FOR ACHI BABA.

ALLIES’’ HETEROGENEOUS ARMY. EXTREME PATIENCE NEEDE.I). “Achi Baba Mountain,” Mr Ashmead Bartlett writes, “has a peculiarly forbidding expression. It me; t nearly resembles on old Chinese idol with a great round, stupid-looking head and two short, thick-set shoulders, and then two long arms stretching out on either side. To see the idol sitting directly in front of you looks exactly as if ho had boon placed there to seize, in his fiendish grasp, all the soldiers, guns and material discharged from the ships in the offing. This ho has not succeeded in doing, and portion of both of his lower arms have been cut off in this three-days' battle. On this memorable morning of May 6 there stood, drawn up in the face of the Huns and Ottoman Turks the army of the last crusade. The British loft rested on the Gulf of Haros, and the French right’ on the Dardanelles. This throe-days struggle might well be called a battle of nations. Side by side with the AngloFrench army there fought" English, Scottish, and Irish regiments, Australians, and New Zealanders, Sihks, Punjabs, Gurkhas, while our navy was represented by a naval volunteer division and marines. On the French side were drawn up Frenchmen, Algerians, Zouaves, Gourniers, Senegalese, and heterogeneous regiments which form the Foreign Legion. Not a Turk, not a Hun, not a. gun, and hardly a trench was visible to our army. Achi Baba and his two long arms might have been deserted for all we knew on this beautiful spring morning. The Turks are exports in never disclosing their positions by any movement above ground.’”

Mr Ashmead Bartlett apparently took a ride just before the battle was over the plain which is embraced by the arms of Achi Baba. He describes it as a beautiful and fertile garden. “You gaze down upon a landscape of dark green, light green, and bngnt yellow,” he goes on. “It abounds in green fields covered with coarse grass, and dotted with trees. There are. besides, many scattered farms In a short ride across it you will find yourself amid olives and Turkey oaks, v.ith otms, apricots, almonds, firs, and small tamarisks. On the cliffs are great bunches of yellow pffintage and red and yellow poppies. You ride over fields and through gardens in which flowers abound in reckless and beautiful profusion. There are white orchids and rock roses, while mauve stock and iris abound. There are fields of poppies, white marguerites, and blue borge intermingled with deep purple vetches, brick-reel pea, and yellow clover, pink and white campions, and asphodel. As you ride through this wonderful garden, which seems designed by nature for the special benefit of those who love peace and retirement, you forget altogether that you are on a field which will shortly be the scene of a bloody battle, and you are only brought to a realisation of you true position by having your horse stop dead before barbed wire, or the sight of deserted trenches, the scenes of the earlier fighting, or by the whistle of a bullet, or the shriek of shrapnel overhead,, warning you that it is time to turn hack or dismount. The whole of this plain is Jittered with the debris of war—broken rifles, barbed wire, deserted trenches, tattered uniforms, hatilydug graves, and abandoned equipment.”

Mr Bartlett concludes his story by saying that the Allies had gained some ground, but that tho main object of the attack had not been achieved. “Achi Baba still looks defiantly on the plain beneath, and it is obvious that a position such as that, held by such indomitable foes as are the Turks, can only; be won by extreme patience. Our men have done everything mortal can do.”