FIGHTING AT THE DARDANELLES

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 319, 15 October 1915, Page 3

FIGHTING AT THE DARDANELLES

DASHING WORK BY NEW ZEALANDERS. THE MAORIS IN ACTION. (From Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with the New Zealand Forces).

No. 3 OUTPOST, Bth August

All night long the bombardment ami the crackle of the Turkish, lire continued. The staff worked throughout the night, and scarcely anyone got tc steep. At 4 a.m. the guns of the navy were firing rapidly on the Turkish positions. I had been asleep for two hours, and woke to find a figure, apparently dead, in front or my bivouac. Presently he moved, sat up, and rubbed his eyes, and I saw that he was wounded. “My word! that's quick firing,” he said; “they are rocking it in, "aren’t they?” As dawn came I saw that it was his arm that was injured. He was in some pain, and very grimy, with blood on his bare knees, between the putties and the shorts; but he was cheerful and talkative. He had been out on the left with three squadrons of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles. They marched along the flat for 500 yards and (hen inland for another 800 yards, when the Turks opened fire.

The Canterbury men drove off the enemy at this point, but on reaching a scrubby knoll about 150 yards further on a Turkish machine-gun opened fire on their right flank. The Now Zealanders charged, and took the gun. though the Turks met them with the bayonet. Finally the Canterbury Mounteds got into the Turkish trenches at the point of the bayonet. It was here that my newly found acquaintance was wounded. "That,” he said, "was whore I finished. I got a Turk in the throat with the first thrust, just as he got mo in the arm,” This man also was loud in his praise of the Maoris, who, after the work of bayoneting in the Turkish trenches was finished, went plunging on through the scrubby slopes, searching the enemy bivouacs fof further victims. Their losses in comparison to their numbers were considerable. OUTWITTING THE TUBE.

To put the Turks ofl' on a wrong tack there had been for some time previously indications of another landing at Gaba Tepe, just south of the Australian position, and the Turks, utterly misled, had been furiously digging and strengthening this position. Secretly and silently large numbers of new troops had been landed and placed in special places and terraces where they could not be observed from the air They were packed in like sardines, while the fight at Lonesome Pine was going on, these troops were moved out in the darkness to our left flank. There were thousands of them, and the operation was a difficult one, because they had to go along a single road on the beach. This road bad been made under cover of the darkness, and was cunningly constructed so that it could nov

be recognised as a road by the hostile aeroplanes. THE PLAN OF ACTION. A comprehensive plan of action had apparently been carefully thought out in connection with the operations on the left flank. The first thing to be clone was to send a covering force from os. 2 and 3 outposts, our extreme left, to take certain hills that would have prevented the main body of the attacking force from getting out. These positions are what are known to us as the old No. 8 Post, Table Top, Little Table Top, and Bauch op’s Hill. This attack, which was to bo a night one, with the bayonet only, was assigned to the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and the Maoris.

Another covering force was sent'out take the Damak Selik Bair, on the extreme left, just over the Aghyl Here, now a dry watercourse. The troops commenced to form up for this attack about 7.80 p.m. Others began to pour out of the end of our long communication trench, and with the assistance of guides to march slowly and silently to the various points of attack assigned them. On the left the Turks, as at other points, were at close quarters and strongly entrenched on a series of rugged scrub-covered hillsi ntersected with deep water-worn ravines extending from a little flat near the centre of Ocean Beach to the long curving ridge of Chunuk Bair about 830 feet high 2,200 yards inland. The whole country is most difficult and puzzling from the miitary point of view to anyone who has not been over it and studied it thoroughly. ( I’he above letter has been heavily censored.)