SCOUTING AT THE DARDANELLES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 150, 25 February 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

SCOUTING AT THE DARDANELLES.

FENIMORE COOPER TALES 0? THE ANZACS. TRACKING THE TURKS. By CAPT. C. E. W. BEAN. (Official Press Representative with the Australian Forces in the Dardanelles.) Gaba Tcpc. In these long dreary intervals of trench fighting you do keep tip one semblance of the older sort of warfare. Even where a'l the rest of the country is tshovelled up into trenches and support trenches and communication trenches—four and five and six miles of Turkish trenches in parts with beautifully planned redoubts and a system of covered ways—even under these en ditions there still remains one portion of country where work is still carried on without any cover, and that is the narrow portion between the trenches. Where the rival lines Jinve come within a few yards, as along several parts of the old Anzac position, of course it is instant death to stir 011+ side the trenches. But where the disance is greater the Turks and we have our occasional patrols, and in the newer parts of the line or where mountain gullies separate the two lines there is quite considerable scope 1 scouting.

It is a weird, primitive sort of warfare —not un'ike that of the Old Foniniore Cooper novels. In the early days some of the best scouting was done by the Tasnianjans; some youngsters spent the day in the second week out behind the enemy's lines looking into him from his own rear.

A GREAT FEAT. They watched a Turkish camp wake for its breakfast —the low blue cloud across the gully which in the first grey of the morning they took to lie the haze of the valley mist turned out "Lo be the smoke from a score of canin fires. They watched a big officer come out from a particularly dignified dugout —saw one servant come along and bring him his washing-basin, while another held his long grey overcoat and his sword and his whip and then fetched him his breakfast. They watched this and a deal more, and afterawards went out in the crow's nest of the old Bacchante —a true friend if ever we had one —and showed her where to shell it, and were royally feasted in the ship's canteen. That ail happened six months ago, in the early days—you cannot quite do those things now with the Turkish lines drawn closely all round you. And yet there are open spaces—great mountain gullies—where both the Turks and our men go. Sometimes our scouts listening out there hear the enemy's patrol —hear one sentry hiss a signal to show his relief the way —just a low "h-s-s-s-t" heard through the bushes, or the yap of a dog or the well-imitated hoot of an owl. Sometimes they actually sec them and meet them. The enemy used to send isolated men right up to the parapet of our trenches to lie up there and li ten. and only the other day an officer and a certain scout having marked down the position of what they believed to bo one of these gentlemen, went out from the trenches to bayonet him. But he was off before they reached the place —all they heard of him was the crash as of a he:.-.y animal plunging through the bush as he broke down the hill through the dark. The Turk never fires a shot on those expeditions if it can possibly be avoided. He is there to get information and not to kill enemies, and if he can get the information without his presence being discovered so much the better for his job. If there is fighting it is done as far as possible with the bayonet. On the day of landing one of our scouts, creeping forward, found a Turk in ambush, watching one of our earliest parties —by the time the scout had crept round behind him the Turk was drawing a bead on the young officer who was leading. lie had fired one shot—but before he could tire the second the scout's clubbed rifle had descended on the back of his head. That is the scout's training.