AMERICAN'S EXPERIENCE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 329, 8 November 1915, Page 3

AMERICAN'S EXPERIENCE.

TALKS TO VON SANDEES.

(By Arthur Buhl.)

When I and another American correspondent arrived at the Gaflipoli Peninsula in a paddle-boat v from Constantinople we fell into the hospitable hands of a German, a civilian volunteer in red fez and the blue and brass buttons of the merchant marine, east here by the chance of war.

It was our first duty to present- ourselves to the commandant of the peninsular forces, Field Marshal Liman von Sanders—Liman Pasha. Our carriage stopped near a sign tacked to a tree, and we walked down a winding path into a thicket of pines. There were trees set in the bank and covered with boughs, and our of one came a tali, sauare-jawed German officer buttoning his coat. He waved aside our passports with the air of one not concerned with such details, asked if we spoke German —or perhaps we would prefer French? and, motioning down the path to a sort of summerhouse with a table and chairs, told an orderly to bring tea. With the tea came thin littie sandwiches and cigars, and over this the commander-in-chief spoke with complete cheerfulness of the general situation. The English and French could not force the Dardanelles; no more could they advance on land, and now that the submarinets had arrived, the fleet, which had been bothersome, would be taken care of. He spoke with becoming sorrow of the behaviour of Italy, and did not mar this charming little fete champetre with any remarks about American shipment of arms. The Tough Turk.

A young aide-de-camp whom we had seen at the wharf declared that the Turkish soldier was the best in the world.

Westerners have heard so long of the Sick Man of Europe and his imminent disease that they are likelty to associate political with physical weakness, and think that the pale, brooding, official type familiar in photographs is the everyday Turk. As a matter of fact, the everyday Turk i? tough-bodied and tough-spirited, used to hard living and hard work. The soldiers you see swinging up Pera Hill or in from a practice march, dust-cov-ered and sweating and sending up through the cedars &. wailing sort of chant as they come—these are as spi'endid-looking fellows as you will see in any army in Europe. It was dark when our waggon lurched into a camp to the south-west, near the centre of the peninsula. The camp was the office, so to speak, of the division commander, with his clerks, telephone operator, commissary machinery, and so on, the commander himself living at the immediate front. It was like scores of other camps hidden away in the hills —brush-covered tents dug into the hillsides, looking like rather faded summer-houses; ar-bour-like horse sheds, covered with branches, hidden in ravines; every waggon, gun, or piece of material that might offer a target to an aeroplane covered with brush. They were even painting grey horses that morning with a brown dye.

Like Bandits. Up one of the hot little valleys we. el'imbed next day, left the carriage, and, walking up a trail cut into the bank, past men and horses hidden away like bandits: came at last to the top, and several tents dug into the rim of the hill. It was the headquarters of Essad Pasha, defender of Janina in the last war, and division commander in this sector of the front. He received us in his tent beside a table littered with maps and papers —a grizzled, good-natured soldier, wlio addressed us in German, and might indeed have passed for a German. He apologised for the cramped quarters, explaining that they were likely at any time to be bombarded and had to live in what was practically a trench. He, too, expressed entire confidence in the Turks' ability to stop any further advance, and, calling an aide, sent us to the periscope, which poked its tw r o eyes through a screen of pine branches a few yards away and looked over the parapet and down on the first-line trenches and the sea. Through the Periscope. We were high above the Aegean and opposite the island of Imbros, which lifted its shazy blue on the western horizon and was used as a base by part of the fleet. To the south rose the promontory . of Gaba i Tepe, cleared of the enemy now, our ' Turkish major said, and, stretching northward from it past us and An Burnu, the curving rim of beach heir by the English. Directly in front of the English trenches were the first-line Turkish trenches, in some places not more than 15 or 20 feet away; so close, indeed, that when there was fighting they must have fought with revolvers, hand grenades, shovels, anything they could lay their hands on. At the moment it was quiet but for the constant crack .. . . crack-crack! of snipers. We could look down on the backs and heads of the Turkish soldiers, and except for a wisp of smoke rising here and there from some hidden campstove, there was not a sign of life in the EngMsh trenches. Snipers were attending to that. Between Two Evils. Even here, in the second-line trenches on top of the second hill, no one was allowed to show his head, and it was all the more ciirious to see a squad of Turkish soldiers digging away below as calmly as so many market gardeners in a potato field. They were running another trench behind the several that already lined the slope, and must have been hidden by a rise of ground, though looking down from above they seemed to be out in the open. The position of the English did not seem enviable. They had trenches directly in front of them, and several hundred feet above them a second line (from which we were looking) dominating the whole neighbourhood. The first-line Turkish trenches were too close to their own to be bombarded from the ships, so that preliminary advantage was cut off: the second-line defences, in the twisting gullies over the hill, could stand bombardment anywhere —and behind was the water. They were very literally between the devil and the deep sea.