At The Dardanelles

Horowhenua Chronicle, 17 July 1915, Page 2

At The Dardanelles

9 SNIPERS AT WORK. MOUNTED liN THE FIRING LINE. (By Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with the New Zealand Forces). 26th May. TRENCH WARFARE. There ifi no use for our horses on the Gallipoli Peninsula. ,'i'he country is entirely unsuited for cavalry or mounted infantry, fio here, as elsewhere, it is likely to be largely a question of trench warfare. General iMarwell, whom 1 saw this afternoon, emphasised that point. Mori! men will be wanted, and what they. .should bo taught is digging and shooting. They must, of .course, be "fit," and they must have learnt discipline; but digging and shooting should be the watchwords of future reinforcements. Tho entrenching tool which the New Zealanders used to tell themselves would bo one of the first things they would discard is now held in possession with an almost sacred reverence. As a lance-corporal put it, a man would go all) day "without his trousers rather than be without his entrenching tool. CO-OPERATION WITH THE SAW.

It .seems certain now that the Navy could never have forced the Dardanelles without an ad*j<iuate landing force. Tho littlo were able to land at rather ■"■iJaii'iy-'J'it I up, among the filled being Anthony ~~1 Wilding, the -famloiis lawn tenuis chain- * pion from New;; Zealand. Even with the co-operation of naval and military forces the capture of the Dardanelles is a tough job. Such united action in the recent operations seems on the. whole to have been very effective.. SIGNALLING. The three wireless .stations erected by the Australians ueiu most valuable. The operators worked calmly among the wounded, with the .shrapnel bursting over them. The heliograph was also used, but more useful .still wi'vc the searchlights of the warships, which could send .signals effectively for miles, by the Morse code even in daylight. The helio is more secret but its seopu is more limited, for at a distance of about two miles its radius i« only a lew yards , wide. Visual signalling was largely done away with, because whenever a man stood up to .signal he would be shot. Often messages wei\< conveyed down the line by word of mouth, one section yelling tlietuout to another till they reached their destiation. INFWENCE OF TUI-: GERMANS. The' German training and leadeiohio has undoubtedly made a vast difference upon the Turkish Army. Tho Turks are up to all the German tricks, but our men soon dropped to most of them, and took such measures as wei"« possible to counteract them. iSucii Turks as shammed wounded in the taken trenches and thon fired at the backs of our men after they had passed or on our wounded at close quarters got short shrift. The Turkish guns wero well concealed, and some of their snipers even had their faces painted green and held or tied a green branch in front of their heads as a screen. After a, . time sonic of our men scropted tho branch idea of screening themselves 'when they were (stalking the snipers, and it was a pathetic sight .sometimes during the advance, to see a New Zealander or an Australian lying dead with little bunches of box or holly stuck through his cap. "ft had a sort of Christmassy effect," said one of tho wounded. Often, added this man, you would see a high bn«li moving slowly along quite near you. You know at once thai you had to lire right into the centre of that. At other times you would we a Turkish face and a pair of oyeis through tho greenery, and then it was a question of who got his shot or his bayonet ..n quickest. During the fir.st day or two's lighting the Turkish fire positions were cleverly screened and our men saw very little of them. Neither did they we many of the enemy, except when tho latter made occasional niKfiois to change to another position. Once the New Zealanders ascertained the position of soino Turkish snipers in the fisherman's hut—a position they could not reach. Word was. however, sent byi Major Loach, via the Signal Corps and the beach wireless, to the warships, and , one of the latter soon opened fire mid cut a few holes in tho. landscape; but it was the Now Zealand howitzer battery—that form a range of about 4000 yards, sent the fisherman's hut into the air in a cloud of dust. They lobbed a fihell right into it. WOMEN SNTPERS. One met 'with frequent stories of women snipers in the Turkish lines, but it was always difficult to get first-hand information about them. A wounded Australian whom 1 met yesterday gave me an instance that had conic under his own notice. These particular snipers—and no doubt many others alsohad silencers on their Mauser rifles. The advancing party therefore hoard only the ping of tho bullet near them, and a sound like the crack of a whip." -■- On thi.s particular occasion they located a sniper close at hand, and went to look for him. There was another "ping!" and one of the men fell dead. .Suddenly the party came upon two snipers, who held up their rifles in token .if surrender. Their rifles wore from them, their hands, tied their backs and wore marched to the beach. They were weavi^j^^f^^S^ uniforms of dead Australian o&J.i: -, and they had about '2000 rounds of ammunition near them, and enough food to last a fortnight. A doctor who examined them at headquarters found that they were both women! On the following day these Australians had to cross a gully on their right flank, and there won , found five of their dead comrades, stripped of ail their clothing, even to the boots. The man who told me this incident had been in the thick of the fighting for

llie first fortnight, and. on more than cue occasion he saw the German offiors driving on the Turks with revolrer and eword. UR-AVJi DEEDS. The jsauic mail did not wish to say much about his own exploits. He however, gave the following instances of heroic action by others that had come under his notice. One soldier \ , working a machine gun was hit by a> ) bullet that just grazed his intestine. , i Then a bullet got him in the right arm, I which was disabled; but lie commenced / to fire with lu's left hand. A fourth J bullet got him fair in Iho forehead. Mr informant did not even know the 1 man's name. tie had brought his Maxim up in charge into the firing lino through the open. It was a gun of the 10th Hattalion. ""Our sergeant," continued the narrator, "was wounded twice, but went on calmly giving orders. First of all t his binoculars were knocked out of his by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel. Then he got a slight wound along the temple. Someone suggested that .'ie should got out of the firing line to receive first aid, but he replied, 'No; L I'll carry on as long a« I can; [ want ft to get even with the beggars.' They A again urged him to get out. but iio merely laughed and said it would be all right. Ten yards farther on lie was shot through the spine, and in halt' :.n hour he wa<s dead. He was a machine gun sergeant belonging to tiuHth Hat- ~, ~-^^||^PF