ON THE PENINSULA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 87, 18 March 1916, Page 3

ON THE PENINSULA.

EXPERIENCES AT CALLIPOLI.

Private Earl Wills, of Wellington, in a letter to a friend, under date 17th October, from Convalescent Camp Woodcote Park, Epsom England writes interestingly as follows: 1 was on the Peninsula three

months altogether, but up to the beginning of the advance in August things were comparatively quiet, except for one or two little scraps with Turks, and one or two heavy shellings, T consider I have had marvellous luci so far—one day the portion of the trenches my company was stationed ii got hell from a six inch gun from oui left; ifc wrecked about 100 yards oi trenches—one landed right alongside me and exploded, killing five anf wounding four in my post, and a though f was much closer than ' mos' of those who were hit, not a piee< Touched me. The force of the. ex plosion blew me about five yards'and knocked me silly for about half ar hour. T have seen one of these Cip shells blow a machine gun tripod aboui '2ooft. into the air, landing about 251 yards away from where the shell burst Fortunately, owing to the softness ol the soil in the trenches, many of these "Jack Johnson's'! don't hurst, anc when they do burst they are generally well buried and do much less ham than they otherwise would do. 01 course they make a frightful mess ol the trenches, which of course, is theii ,real object. j We started the, Advance °n the lefl '■ ;on Friday, August Bth, afc 10.20 p.in. (I well remember the order "The Bai Jtalion will rnove off at twenty minute? past ten'?) aud the order was <'Nri cartridges in the magazine, only bay-

to be used." We had to move, <or rather ialmost crawl, under a fairl.v I heavy fire for about 300 yards, jand lost a good lew.men, but the fire!was only guess work on the part of' thje onemy, as they did. .not, Jf' lo 'w' .f° r ; fel j" tain that we were attacking, luit still When the enemy get scared they, fire like blazes everywhere, and so many bullets landed among us. By; 'this time we were in a position to attack, and to get kvthe first trench we had to cross a clear space of about 150 yards. Of course they heard us coming, and we got it hot and strong. We lost about a third of our company getting to that trench but fortunately for us the men with the cutters had pretty we'll cleared the barbed wire away. After that it was more or less : of a game of chasing, as. the enemy were taken properly by surprise, and had no preparations made to make much of a stand after we got the first line of trenches, but they congregated in disorganised mobs on the tops of hillSj most of which were flat "table tops" and we surrounded these and captured the Turks with practically no loss. Captain Wilkinson, of Wellington, was hit in the head going up one of these hills, and afterwards died of his wounds. When we had got these hills we had to take a trench running round the side of a fairly high hill running straight up from a steep gully. By this time we were pretty well disorganised, and when our major called for our Company (10th Otago), only 20 or 30 could he collected right away, and as it was beginning to get light there was no time to waste, so we tackled one end of the trench. We managed to get in and then we started to shift the Turks out. ' Major Statham (our O.C. Company) went first, then a lieutenant anothtr chap and myself. 1 managed to grab up -x. load of bombs and we began to shift them. Then the major told two or three to load up and we began firing into ti'e Turks, and they stampeded along the trench tumbling over one another to get out at the other end,

which was round the corner of the ridge, but this was too slow, as we were pressing them too hard and they jumped out the hack and raced up .the. hill, and we got them nicely ,as they scaled up. When we rushed one traverse of the trench I saw our major, shoot three with his revolver—it's great fun when you have gat it all your own way like that. The next move was to take fche top of the hill (Rhododendron Hill), hut this was easy, as tlie Turks were completely rattled hy this tiui<\ find offered very little resistance, and so gaining the top we had to make a stand and dig ourselves in, as there were no reinforcements forthcoming to hack us up. The top of this part of the hill sloped almost straight down on tlit other side, and we could look down into the gully and see the thousands of Turks scaling up the other side, and we gave them li- —; the disappointing part ahout it was that this next hill commanded the Narrows, and the Turk's communication lines to the Achi Baha position, and if we had only had a few hundred Fresh men to chase the Turks lip and over this hill (971), which, by the.by was not entrenched) things would have been in a very different way by now, and thousands of lives would have been saved. After about' an hour things began to get very hot >n this point, as it was the most adduced position we held. About eleven i.m. tbe Canterbury Battalion began

Jto arrive in small, doses, foepftUfte the - approach was abverod by enemy's mac-I bine guns, asfby this time they had j managed to get in on our iWt, almost I ' behind us; so when all the Canterbury chaps had arrived our major told us | to follow him, and we swung round to I the left and got ptuek into the Turks, j who tvera giving us so much trouble , (we had begun to lose very heavily by this time). When wo charged round this hill, we Were met by a terrific , machine-gun fire; it was so heavy that it was hard to see where we were going Jon account of the dust tile bullets made, and htiW one can get through !• such a place without being'hit I can't 'understand; but we managed ! to (lb it ■i with very little InHS, ahd were very I soon reinforced by the "Tommies" of i|KitCuener's Army,, and we left them i to it and went down into the gully to ■reorganise. When I went, to '. the section I was supposed to be in n charge, on account of the corporal hnv? ■i ing been hit, I could only find one II out of n total of ten. However, having ij reorganised to a certain extent, we ..moved up the hill in support ftf the .Tommies. It wns a of'J o'clock' in ) the afternoon of Saturday. 6th, by this ' time. We waited there on Saturday I night and all day Sunday, but got no \ sleep, as tbo Turks were attacking 'pretty IVequently. At 8 p.m. on Suii- | day we were' ordered to move off to I attack Hill 971 (so called on account of its height, 971 ft.), which the Tom--Imies had attacked previously and failled, with losses. We managed to get I on the top of; pa,rt of the hill and half •' way up a sirtMltilcUolLon o,i)r left, which was heavily jahd not hav r ing unable to 'gain the whole knoll, which fact prow 'ed 'About tweM.v. Winding tnyself. were ' sent to the extreme right of this position, to''protect? our'flank,' and as we • had no picks or shovels at that point we had to dig in as best we could with our entrenching tools, which was 'devilish work?fas we. were under fire all the time arid the. ground' was as hard as hla/.esi To make matters. Uiorh hellish we we're also under. ifke.*frorii the big guns iff onr own warships, and '^hey"played the deuce with us all that night and for a few hours the next day; in fact, a. large number of our losses was due to this unfortunate mistake. The Turks attacked us several times during'the night. It was just light enough to see them coming over the hill in close formationthousands Q them,; but jthey got it hot from" us; not once getting hearer than twenty yards. When daylight broke things weren't half hot, Thi> Turks on,the ton of. the. knoll mention- , pil atSjpn looked' 'right down oh us- * and' as"most of us were ; . thp opeji: hill" with out any 'eov.-r, they were piekjhg us off one after:.an> other, and, every time [raised my head to shoot I got a small shower of bullets all round me. As the day wore on .it got very uncomfortable, as I couldn't move, and we had been sent out there without water or rations and the sun was shining at top. This day (Monday, 9th) was more or less of a frightful;'nightmare, what with the iabsence of water and want of sleep— II kept falling off to sleep every few minutes. They had tried to get water and reinforcements out to us several i times during the day, but it was impossible without tremendous loss; so we had to hang out as .best we could with the promise of relief at night, The relief arriyed at Qi,ii,\ end about 2 a.m. on ' glad J was, to see'-tlie Tommies' helmets sneaking , foVei; : ttio 'Vsky-line behind tltfsfyime'the Turks had began to suspect some movement on onr part wnd'-were firing, Ijke,, hell 'ii the much time in getting' back to'safety. On my way back'(in a time like that, it is everybody for himself). I found a party in the gully completely lost. They wanted to go right in to the Turks' lines, but luckily I knew my nay about and told them to follow me, pointing out the right direction. I started off back, and when I got over the hill into 'our reserves there was only one

chap, with me. What had happennl to the .rest I don't know, hut anyhow, d" they wont the way T told them to go they must have got in provided they didn't ge< hit. When we got down the gully our Quartermaster was wai'Mif with a few cans of wife, and I had .f'liA best drink 1 onv... r-\ er had -tv.o billies fuli and never felt is. it, was the host water 1 have ever hud. and yet if you saw u in daylight in Now [Zealand you wouldn't wash youv foot tin it. | We had started out in this novanoe lon the Friday with 800 men in the [Battalion, and on Tuesday, 10th, w.-re 'joined with 353 reinforcements, who had just arrived with sth Reinforeements. By-the-iiy, we hadn't boon 'more than two or three hours off that Ihill when the Turks attacked in force, nnd the whole lot that wo had gamed (about 500vds), was lost and we were actually in sight of the sea on the other side. Hard look, wasn'; it? (Our follows took it again on 21 st August- the day I left G.allipoli). However.. we got some of our own back when the Turks came over the

hill. There were about thirty of our machine-guns waking for them. Captain WallutgiWd, Uk' machine gun man, said their casualties were at least 5000 killed: One machine gunnel' said thai, mi his gun they had sixteen men filling belts and the gun didn't stop for half an hour. Our little spin on the hill cost us all our company officers, Sergeant-major, and sergeants, and the other three companies in our battalion were almost as badly off. After the 10th it was more or less ordinary trench warfare where we were, except for one or two goes that the covering parties and patrols had. On ist-h August our Batatlion, or what was left of them (378 all told—officers and men—including (he 353 reinforcements— practically the whole of the old crowd'gone i was sent down for a rest (about a fortnight they told us). but we had only been.down three, days when we were suddenly ordered up to the bretiellcN again. By this time we were all played out, and dozens were dropping bnt from sheer physical and mental exhaustion. We did not have, hi out' Battalion, anything like sufficient men to man that part of the line, and so for. me it meant 48 hours duty straight on end-this was the finish of me. T collapsed and was sent down L to the beach, and from there was sent to Lemnos. and after a short stay there and a rather uneventful voyage, f landed in Devonport, calling at Malta and Gibraltar on the way. From Devonport we went by train to Bristol, where I spent about two weeks in hospital. The people in Bristol treated us Colonials slike lords, carted us round everywhere, and sent us everything we wanted. .1 was sorry to leave there, it was too much like home. . ;