At The Dardanelles

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 66, 17 July 1915, Page 7

At The Dardanelles

i FRENCH WARFARE. SNIPERS AT WORK. THE MOUNTED IN THE FIRING LINE. (By Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with the New Zealand Forces). 26th May. It would require more than one thick volume to chronicle half the deeds of heroism that have been done in this Dardanelles business. There is a ■young follow here just now who was dug out of spine Departmental ollice ■in Egypt, given the rank of captain, anad put in charge of a ship with a 'man who could navigate. He is a cool, brainy fellow, not likely to dash into anything in a hurry, and not likely to lose his head in any emergency. He would not thank me for mentioning Ids name. When the New Zealanders arrived at the Dardanelles they saw a 'steamer beached with a big hole in her, for’ard. But they did not know her story. It appears that she was torpedoed by the Turks during one rather daring adventure, and the Greek crew, knowing she would sink

sooner or later, took to the boats and left her. One of the British destroyers, however, chased them back into the ship,and the young captain and his navigator drove them to work again with iron spanners or anything heavy and solid that come first to hand. The result was that they managed to beach the ship. She is now at Alexandria, being fixed up again, and Captain W. has been able to take a run to see his wife in Cairo, after between two and three months strenuous work in the Dardanelles. In a few days he will be back at his job in that spot that all the world, but especially Egypt and the Near East, is now watching with so intense an interest.

TRENCH WARFARE. J havo already explained that they have no use for our horses on the Galli|K>li Peninsula. Tlie country is eutirely unsuited for cavalry or mounted infantry, so here, as elsewhere, it is likely to he largely a question of trench warfare. General .Maxwell, whom 1 ■saw this afternoon, emphasised that point. More men will he wanted, and what they should he taught is digging and shooting. They must, of course, ho “fit,” and they must have learnt discipline; hut digging and shooting should he the watchwords of future reinforcements. The entrenching tool which the New Zealanders used to tell themselves would he 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 he without his entrenching tool. The little heap of dirt you make in front of yourself with it is worth a pound an ounce. It is the most valuable hit of dirt in all the world!

CO-OPERATION’ WITH THE NAVY.

It seems certain now that fcho Navy could never have forced the Dardanelles without an adequate landing force. The little force they themselves were able to land at first was rather badly cut up, among the killed being Anthony Wilding, the famous lawn tennis champion from New Zealand. Even with the co-operation of naval and jmilitary 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. One instance of splendid cooperation was told me by an eye-wit-ness. The warships off the coast were a very heavy fire on one particular section of the Turkish treniches, the idea being that when the bombardment ceased the Colonials were to storm the trenches at the ipoint of the bayonet. For throe-quar-jters of an hour shell after shell was ■poured into the Turks, our men advancing by short rushes till they got close up. At the critical moment the warships and our field guns suddenly ceased firing, and the Colonials launchid their attack across the lately shellswept ground, and with the bayonet soon finished most of the Turks that remained alive. This was an ideal attack, the co-operation being perfect.

The ships had been shelling over our men at a range of 4000 yards.

SIGNALLING

The signalling in such a case would probably have been done by big (lag wagging. The three wireless stations erected by the Australians were most valuable. 'Hie operations worked calmly among the Wounded, with the shrapnel bursting ove rthem. The heliograph was also used, hut more useful still were the searchlights of the warships, which could .Morse effectively for miles, even in daylight. The holio is more secret hut its scope is more limited, for at a distance of about two miles its radius is only a few yards wide. Visual signalling was largely done away with, because whenever a man stood up to signal lie would he shot. Often messages were conveyed down the lino by word of month, one section yelling them out to another till they rebelled their destination. INFLUENCE OF THE GERMANS.

Tin* Gorman trsiiiiiitfr and leadership lias iimloubLecily made a vast difference upon the Turkish Army. The Turks arc up to all the German tricks, jbut our men soon dropped to most of ( them, and took such measures as were possible to counteract them. Such Turks as shammed wounded in the taken trenches and then lired at the hacks of oar men alter they had passed or on our wounded at close quarters go I short shrill. 'The Turkish guns were well concealed, and some of their snipers even had their faces painted green, and held or tied a green

neb in front of their In nils as a sciveu. After a tiu.e some of our men adopted tin- branch ii’.*-a mi screening thi-msclves when they More stalking snipers, and it- was a pathetic sight sometimes, during the advance, to see a New Zealander or an Australian lying dead with little hunches of box or holly stuck through his cap. “It had a sort of Christmassy effect, ” said one of the wounded. Often, added this man, you would see a hush moving slowly along quite near you. You knew at once that you had to fire right into the centre of that. At other times you would see a Turkish face and a pair of eyes through the greenery. and then it was a. question ot who got his shot or his bayonet in quickest. During the first day or two’s lighting the Turkish fire positions I were cleverly screened, and our men saw very little of them. Neither diet they see many of the enemy,.except when the latter made occasional rust - cs to change to another position.

Once the New Zealanders asecr:a ned the position of some Turkish snipers in the fisherman’s hut—a position they could not reach. Word was, lowever, sent by Major .Loach, via the Signal Corps and the beach wireless, to the warships, and one of the latter soon opened fire and cut a few holes in the landscape; but it was the New Zealand howitzer battery—by this time landed and well dug in—that from a range of about -1000 yards, sent the (i-herman’s hut into the air in a cloud of dust. They lobbed a shell l ight into it. WOMEN SNIPERS. One met with frequent stories of women snipers in the Turkish lines,and »t was always difficult to get first-hand information about them. A wounded Australian whom 1 met yesterday gave mo an instance that had corn© under his own notice. These particular snipers—and no doubt many others also—- had silencers on their Mauser rifles. The advancing party therefore heard only the ping oi the bullet near them, and a sound like the crack of a whip. On this particular occasion they located a sniper •lose 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 of surrender. Their rifles were taken from them, their hands tied behind their backs, and they were marched down to the beach. They were wearing the uniforms of dead Australian soldiers, 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 they found five of their comrades, stripped of all their clothing, even to the boots.

The man who told mo this incident had lioen in the thick of the fighting for the first fortnight, and on more than one occasion he saw the German officers driving on the Turks with revolver and sword.

BRAVE DEED#. The same man did not wish to say much about his own exploits. The, however, gave the following instances of heroic action hy others that had come under his notice. One soldier working a machine-gun was hit hy a bullet that just grazed his intestine. He continued to work the gun. Then a bullet got him in the right arm, which was disabled; hut he commenced to fire with his left hand. A fourth bullet got him fair in the forehead. My informant did not even know the man’s name. He had brought his Maxim up in a charge into the firing line through the open. It was a gun of the 10th Battalion .

“Oui- sergeant,” continued the narrator, “was wounded twice, but went on calmly giving orders. First of all, his binoculars were knocked out of his hand hy a bullet or a piece of shrapnel. Then he got a slight wound along the temple. Someone suggested that he should get out of the firing line to receive first aid. but he replied, “No; I’ll carry on as

long as I can : I want to get even with the beggars.’ ’they again urged him to get out, but be im.-u.-ly laughed and said it would be all right. Ten yards farther on he was shot through the spine, and in ball an hour he was dead. He was a machine gun

sergeant belonging to the 4tb battalion.” THE MOUNTEDS AND THE ‘’OUT SLOGGERS. The New Zealand mounted men have left their horses behind them and have gone to the front as infantry. “By jove, they xvi 1 1 go into it heart and soul,” said a wounded man to me this afternoon. “Why?'” 1 asked. “Because,” he replied, “ol the way our chaps have been treated.”

There, is, of course, always a kind of natural enmity between the hoi soman and the foot slogger. Ihe mounted men used to look down on the infantry, and jokingly refer to ih-nu as “beetle-crushers.” And m Egypt the mounted men certainly had the best end of the stick in so far as the training went. The infantry had to go through a very severe ordeal indeed. Along the Heliopolis-Snez road they did many a weary mile under the hot Egyptian sun. Sometimes they did routemarches of twenty miles. One day they did twenty-live miles by the map over soft desert sand with packs, rifles, and equipment weighing between 601 b and 701 b! Some days they thought they would never last it out. They thought it absolute hell. But thev never complained, and somehow they always managed to do it. They would come back in the evening, with eyebrows and eyelashes and such hair as was uncovered absolutely white. They were the weirdest looking soldiers imaginable. But they stuck it out. The took it as part of the

game. On til is Suez road there are, at certain intervals some old watch-tow-ers built hundreds of years ago. One of the most usual marches was out to the third watch-tower and back. The men got to hate that tower witn an unforgettable hate. They used to see it in their dreams. One night, as the New Zealanders were marching back, they were met by some Australians going out on a bivouac. They asked where the New Zealanders had been. They replied “To the third tower.” “Where are you going? asked a Now Zealander. “To the third tower,” was the reply. “But it won’t ho so bad next week ; we’re going to push it six miles nearer camp to-night!”

When the troops wore leaving Zeitoun for Lemnos, at the Dardanelles, everybody thought an said “Well, thank God, there will bo no more third tower!” But a wag in the Mounteds camo up and asked “Have you seen what the Brigadier has got in the gliard’s van?” “No, ’ answered the ‘boettle-crusher,” “what is it?” “It’s the old third tower; he’s taken it to pieces and packed it up,” was the reply.

1 Once aboard the troopships the men knew they were really done with the old tower. But at Lemnos they landed for n route march, and they had not gone far before they came upon an exactly similar tower! They all seemed to see it at once; hut it was left to a man in the ranks to neatly ■sum up the situation. “Good Lord” he cried, “There’s the old third

When the foot-sloggers went away tower; it’s beaten us here!”

to the Dardanelles and the mounteds J had to remain behind, it was the lat- ; ter who came in for chaff. They were promptly designated “The Sultan’s; bodyguard!” “My word, you’ll have a fine time in Cairo trotting the Sultan around,” was the last thrust of a departing beetle-crusher. But, ! the mounteds were just dying to get | into It, and when the time came they did not even mind leaving their horses behind them. Since then they have been in the thick ot it, shoulder to shoulder with the foot-sloggers, , and many a good man among them , will never see his horse again. '1 hey went bravely forward to avenge the j deaths of comrades who had gone hefore, and bravely they have given j their all for King and Country. Ear j away from his beloved horse—now i idle in the desert camp at Zeitonn— | many a rider ha.s padded the hoof along the road into the Great Filial own.