MESOPOTAMIA.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 1 June 1917, Page 4

MESOPOTAMIA.

NAVY CHASES THE TURKS

SOME HOT CORNERS

By Edmund Chandler, the /Special Representative with the Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia.

Azizie, March 3 (via Basra). Our gunboats and cavalry have turn ed the Turkish retreat into a rout.

The day after the crossing the navy landed and hoisted the Union Jack at Kut. The next morning they were cooperating with our infantry in their attack on the main Turkish rearguard. They then received the welcome orders to pursue. After playing the role' of heavy' garrison artillery they had become cavalry, and their immediate work was to round up and capture the enemy’s ships.

Soon after passing Bghailah, forty-six miles,upstream from Kut, they came in contact with the Turkish infantry, who lined the river bank and poured in a heavy fire, but it was at the Nahr Kcl lah bond that the Turks made the most desperate effort to hold up our fleet. The river here turns back on itself in a complete hairpin bend, so that passingvessels are under fire from three sides. Turkish artillery and machine-gun teams dug themselves in at the apex of the bond, raked the gunboats as they were coining and going, and fired pointblank at them as they passed. IN A TIGHT PLACE. Our 12-pounder pompoms and' macbineguns enfiladed positions as the vessels went by, pounding the 'Turkish trenches at 300 yards. It was a hotcorner for. us. Both the quartermaster and pilot in the conning-tower of one of the monitors were shot dead, and the captain entered just in time to save the vessel running ashore The plating was pitted with shells struck masts, ladders, and rigging, but not a gunboat was sunk. Swinging round the bend at 10 knots an hour the fleet reached a point where tlie road comes in towards the river, and their machine guns played havoc with the Turkish transport and gun teams. More enemy guns were abandoned. Our horse artillery got on them at the same time, and afterwards we found the Turkish dead on the road.

There was every sign of panic and rout—the bullocks, still alive and unyoked entangled in traces of trench mortar carriages, broken wheels, cast equipment, overturned limbers, hundreds of live shells of various calibres scattered over the country for miles. Either the gunners had east off freight, to lighten the limbers, or they had been too rushed to close up the limber-boxes. SHIPS SUNK. The gunboats, while keeping up a brisk fire on the *oank, were also engaging the enemy 's shipping at an extreme range. The last of the enemy’s line of ships was the t'rst to sink, a ship with a 4.7 gun which had been captured from our horseboat at Kut. The Basra. a Lynch Company’s steamer, was next taken. She was passed by our fleet and ordered to stand by. Later she was escorted down stream under her own steam. She had about 1000 Turkish wounded and sick on board, including sixty officers, and also 150 dead, IS wounded Indians and 8 wound ed British, including an officer, these prisoners having been taken at Sanna-i-Yat

The Firefly, the gunboat lost by us at Ctcsiphon, was nest captured. She had been keeping up a running fire as we pursued, but the crew, to avoid being taken, ran her nose ashore, landed, and escaped, leaving her with full steam up and intact save for strained boilers.