Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1925. OUR DAY OF REMEMBRANCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 121, 24 April 1925, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1925. OUR DAY OF REMEMBRANCE.

The toutli anniversary of the memorable landing of the Anzac troops on tho rugged shores of Gallipoli is being fittingly observed to-morrow as a day of sacred remembrance. It is only right that it should be so,, and that we should bear in mind on this one day of the year, if on no other, the gallant men of Australia and New Zealand who were concerned and lost their lives in the Great War, but more particularly in that magnificent assault upon one of the most impregnable lines of fortifications in the world. Jn the many accounts of the landing that have been published there is general agreement concerning the valour displayeil by both the Australian and New Zealand troops, the greater number of whom had never been under fire before, and it would seem very much like “painting the lily’’ to repeat the eulogiums passed upon them by the t war correspondents and others. Yet we may be pardoned for recalling the story told by the correspondent of the London Times, who depicted the Anzac boys landing amidst “a terrible fusillade from rifles and also from a Maxim” in the hands of a party of Turks entrenched almost on the shore, and rising “as a man to the .occusiofi. They waited neither for orders nor for the boats to reach the .beach (the correspondent said), but springing out into tbe sea they waded ashore and, forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the enemy’s rifles. Their magazines were not even charged. So they just went in with cold steel. It was over in a minute. The Turks in this first trench were bayoneted or ran away and a Maxim gun was captured.” The men of the Anzac breed proved their quality in that first intrepid rush upon the enemy. They were just as successful in capturing and driving out the Turks from their second line of trenches, but the enemy was in strong force and had their sharp-shooters hidden everywhere along the beach and. as each party landed, they were subjected to a heavy fusillade which worked sad havoc amongst their numbers. “Some idea of the difficulty to be faced,” the Times correspondent said, “may be gathered when it is remembered that every round of ammunition, all water and all supplies had to be landed on a narrow beach, and then carried up pathless hills, valleys and bluffs, several hundred feet high, to tho firing line. The whole of this mass of troops, concentrated on a very small area and unable to reply, were exposed to a relentless and incessant shrapnel fire, which swept every yard of the ground, although, fortunately, a great deal of it was badly aimed or burst too high.” But the Anzacs won the day, although the Turkish gunners punished them very severely before they were able to effectively retaliate, and were able to hold and advance their positions until the evacuation of tho Peninsula was decided upon several months later. The pity of it is that the sacrifices made by those who perished, or were maimed and wounded in the war, have since been so lightly

regarded by the politicians that the enemy has largely escaped the punishment lie should have received.