At The Dardanelles.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 55, 5 July 1915, Page 7

At The Dardanelles.

MORE TALEsTfRGM THE TRENCHES.

A CORPORAL’S STORY.

DEEDS OF HEROISM AND SELF-

SACRIFICE.

(From Malcolm lloss. Official War Correspondent with the N.Z. Forces). Cairo, 20th May, 1915.

Lance-Corporal Noel Ross, who is in hospital here suffering from shock and an injured spine and leg, had an extraordinary experience. A shell exploded near him when he was rangefinding on the Sunday, but he went on fighting, and later—on the Wednesday collapsed on the battlefield. After remaining unconscious for sixteen hours, he came to on a hospital ship, and it was an extraordinary coincidence that on awakening he found that ho had been ticketed by an old schoolfellow—Dr. Aubrey Short. He had also lost his hearing, apparently ns the result of an exploding' shell, but this he has now regained. He seems to have had a miraculour escape, for there was not even a scratch on him. His memory up to a certain point is perfectly clear regarding incidents and operations in those first few terrible days, and in various interviews he gave me the subjoined account of his own observations and experiences. There were, however, periods on the Tuesday, and also late on Wednesday, about which he could not remember what had happened His mind, so fan, a-s these are concerned, is an absolute blank.

DAWN AND THE BATTLEFIELD. “We were,” he said, “awakened at an early hour, on the morning of Sunday, the 25th April. A man came tumbling down the gangway into the hold of the troopship in which we were sleeping on the iron floor, and said that he could hear the guns. There was an immediate rush for the deck, and sure enough we could hear the bombardment almost like a continuous roll of thunder. What made it the more .uncanny was the fact that, though we were only some five miles off shore, a low flat mist was veiling, both the ships and the land from outside. As. the sun rose, however' and we drew nearer to the Gallipoli Peninsula, the features of the country became startingly clear, and we saw great warships steaming up and down the coast, while others were stationary, shelling the Turkish positions. We went close inshore a mile or two from Gaba Tepe, and steamed slowly along the coast. Presently, even without glasses, on could see figures running* about on the beach and in the fields back of the beach. The Australians had succeeded in landing their covering party, and, apparently, were making some headway. Through',, the glasses the firing-line became | more and more distinct at one now well-known corner, marked on the map as the ‘Fishemen’s Hut,’ the attack developed, and as the khaki line rushed across an open field in extended order I could see now and again a man throw up hie hands and fall heavily. The place was occupied in due course, and—as we found afterwards in our advance—the Turks had been driven from the adjacent contours at the point of the bayonet, though most of them dhd not wait for the actual ‘inoculation.’ Their retirement along the whole front, whether intentional or not, was a tactical one, for by falling back they drew our men on into the" scrub-covered country on the hills above. “To realise the formation of the country, you must imagine a series of hills starting abruptly from the beach, and the first one perhaps, 200 feet high. These hills recede in parallels, eacli one higher than the other, until finally they atttain a height of 700 feet above sea-level. Thus it will lie seen that the fight -for us was always an uphill one. As we took each ridge, the Turks from an eminence higher still poured down a heavy fire upon us. Thus our Army Corps

was visible to the Turks during almost our entire advance, whereas they, retreating, were generally invisible to us. THE LANDING OF THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

“To come back to our own landing, all this time the thunder, of the guns continued, and the rattle of ride fire was incessant—like thousands of kettledrums beating ceaselessly. ‘Every now and then the venomous spit of the Maxims would add its quota to the volume of the great battle chorus. Presently came the orders to disembark. Each man then drank his fill of water, taking as much as he could possibly hold, the idea, of course, being that a man under such conditions last longer without drinking, and so could save the water for a time when it might be sorely needed. Even in such a tense-situation, the men were ready for a joke, and one member of our company said that if it had been beer instead of water with which they wore making the experiment, he could have carried away twice as much. Water, he said ,somewhat damped his ardour in this strange experiment.

“In a little while a destroyer, grim and alert, glided alongside our ship, and a sailor on board asked it wo ‘were ready lor it.’ ‘lt’s pretty warm ii)) there,’ lie added, ‘hut they’ve got ’em on the run.’ The destroyer was towing large, flat-hottoined punts. Into these we crowded, sitting as close together as it was possible to pack I men. We had full equipment—two 'hundred rounds of ammunition, three days’ rations, a full water-bottle, and even firewood. Our burdens weighed between 801 b and 901 b. Slowly the destroyer steamed inshore, towing the barges full of men, and when she got

in 'the limit of her draught she cast us off. .ft was a weird scene, and i most of us -had queer sensations in tlie pits of our stomachs as the bulletts began to whizz about us, and the guns continued to thunder from the | sea and the hidden Turkish batteries !on shore. The bullets came with a 'sort of a whistle. "Von know the j noise a hawk makes. It was like (that. They landed with a ‘punt’ in I the water between and alongside the barges. One man in our barge was ! hit in the jaw by a spent bullet. A picket-boat, in charge of an immaculate middy, now came up an rushed us further inshore. The barges—■great heavy affairs—would not, of j course, go right up to the beach, and • so most of us dropped over the side iu water up to our armpits ahd half ' swam, half waded, ashore. With our I burdens of between 801 b pnd 901 b, this j was no joke. Formed up on the beach we were given no rest. A staff offi'cer informed Colonel Stewart that reinorcements were wanted on the right at the double. IN THE FIRING-LINE. “We discarded our packs, and by a | tortuous path scrambled up to the firing-line. Then the difficulties of the i operations became manifest. At this point the hills were covered with dwarf prickly holly and giant box shrubs, making progress difficult, and adequate communication almost impossible. Gradually we got nearer the enemy’s rifle fire,,and his,shrapnel began to burst over us. Sp difficult was the matter of communication that when we actually reached our sector of the line we had only about ten men left of a company of 240, the great majority of the others having missed the true line of ascent, and reached another part of the front. It was the same with the Australians. In a little while I was separated from my commanding officer, and found myself in a Turkish trench with some Australians. We got some excellent practice on a few Turks coming down the slope on one of the opposite lulls. Away on our flank, one of our machine guns was betraying itself by the incessant jet of steam that was rising, from its over-heated water jacket. Shrapnel was beginning to burst about us thickly, and soon of the eleven men in the trench only four of us were left, so we decided that it was getting a little too hot for comfort. Two of the others were only wounded and managed to make their way to the rear. We four then skipped further along across a bare day face. Half-way across it I missed my footing, and slid for perhaps a hundred feet on to a path below. A sergeant on the opposite side called to me, ‘Don’t come down there; it’s mined!’ Rather annoyed, I replied, ‘Well, catch me as I go up again.’ However, I slid over tlie place in safety, and, somewhat shaken, but still sound in wind and limb, resumed my place in the firing-line.

COMRADES IN ARMS. “-All, that day tins' weird fighting continued, and the broken sectors, unable to communicate with each other, fought staunchly—Australians and New Zealanders shoulder to shoulder-—against great odds, and in manjjr '■ otises were But we held our ground in spite of everything. Every battalion had reached the firing-line indisorder. That was inevitable, owing to the nature of the country and of the fighting. Many of the trenches were filled with miscellaneous squads made up of Australians and New Zealanders. Hitherto not the best of friends, the men from the two colonies now fought together like demons, helped each other’s wounded, shared each other’s water-bottles, and died together, till, I at the end of the day, those who had come through safely in strong terms expressed their mutual admiration and vowed eternal friendship. i A SLEEPLESS NIGHT. “Night came at last, and as the sun dipped beyond the Gulf of, baros the rifle fire slackened perceptibly arid finally came only in fitful bursts, these bursts, from whichever side they came, being due mostly to nerves. Then as was their wont on this and the succeeding nights the Turks started a violent shrapnel five. Their

shplK hem over , acre hunting high and their eifort lor this reason was considerably minimised. At the same time, the enemy observation. was well conducted and their better lire was well placed by some observers, who in tlie daytime must have been abate see the whole el' our base on the beach and all our trenches. “All that night we got no sleep; about 8 o’clock a line but chilling rain began to fall. Added to this most of us were still moist with a clammy dampness as the result of our drenching in the salt water in the early morning. We lay down as we Avert? without blankets. Throughout the night rifle fire continued fitfully, bullets falling all around. By this time, however, AA r e were tjuite used to this. At first you are inclined to duck when you hear a bullet Avhistling overhead, but there is no use ducking, because before you could do so the bullet would be either past you or through you. With a shell it is different. You hear its screech in time, and duck for any cover there may be in the immediate vicinity. The whistle of the shrapnel bullets is perhaps more uncanny than the noise made by an approaching shell. The Queen Elizabeth was firing shrapnel Avith bullets about the size of small eggs. Some feAV bullets fell over us, and we picked up others in the abandoned Turkish trenches as we advanced. A 15-inch shell from ‘The Lizzy’ contains 20,000 bullets, and as an 18-pounder field gun can cover an area of 250 yards by 50 you can imagine lioav many acres of ground the shrapnel from the new battleship can duet up with one shot.

i ON THE LEFT FLANK. “We of the Canterbury Battalion had the left flank to look after .and though it proved a comparative sine-' cure on this night we had to he none the less watchful. This was the position we took up at nightfall after regaining the scattered units of our battalion. As was customary we stood to arms a little while before daybreak. Almost immediately the sun rose the rifle fire recommenced. A MOVING INCIDENT. “I forgot to toll you that on the Sunday when I was using a rangefinder I was the witness of a strange and extraordinary incident. The range-finder is in itself a powerful telescope. On our immediate front, that is on the left of our whole position, there were two ship’s boats on the beach. In one a dead man sat in a dejected attitude with an arm thrown over the gunwale. In the other boat, half a mile from us, were a great many bodies—Australians. Altogether there were thirty dead men there—or at last so we thought at the time. As I looked through the glass’ I could see the body of an apparently dead sailor lying in a most life-like attitude, his white face turned as if he were gazing towards our position, his, chin resting on his hand. I thought little more -about this sad scene until the Monday aternoon, when, about 8 o’clock I had another look through the glass. Then 1 saw that the sailor had changed his position and. was lying—his white cap still on his head—with his face turned to the sky. Ten minutes later I was thrilled to see a figure detach itself from the ghastly heap and hobble along the beach only to collapse a few yards away. The moment lie had moved a Turkish sniper had opened fire on him, and I could see the splash of several bullets in the water after they had gone past him. With four men I went along the beach to try and get him out, but we had not got more than a hundred yards from our trench when the sand and stones near us began to rise in dust in response to a Turkish fusilade. Other bullets whizzed past us into the sea. We i then decided that it was best to go about our job more warily, so running from cover to cover we got within hailing distance of the man I had seen. He was shot through both knees and | was cheery but almost done. There were four others ,he said, out there, in a heap, still alive. The night before there had been eight, but four of these had not lasted till dawn. At j this time we had been drawing the lire of the Turks, and we dared not approach the wounded man, who was lying right in the open, for fear of attracting the further attention of the Turks to him. By degrees he managed to crawl to cover and we got him back.”

“Was tins incident reported,” I could not help asking. “Oil, no,” replied the corporal, shifting his semi-paralysed leg into an easier position by pushing it with his sound one, “that was only an ordinary affair. Such incidents were happening every few minutes. There were scarcly enough cannon within our lines during those first few days when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps stormed and held the heights of Gaha Tepe.” Every five minutes deeds were performed that were worthy of the highest decoration known to military authorities. Looking hack on those first days one has nightmare like visions out of which stand clear some of the most consummately cool peiformances.

Toiling up a slope in the early hours of the morning we came across a wounded Australian officer. He was shot through the jaw and had halted |to have a rest half-way from the firing line to the dressing station. Ho was a ghastly object as he sat there with a caricature of a grin on his poor shattered taipe, hut he had all his wits about him, and he told us in detail where we wore most wanted, what to do when we got there, and then ho mercifully fainted just as a stretcher party came up to receive him. Everywhere it was the same, and one got, positively blase about such incident?