GALLIPOLI.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 28 June 1917, Page 6

GALLIPOLI.

STORY OF THE WITHDRAWAL. HOW IT WAS ACHIEVED. "The Evacuation of Gallipoli" formed the subject of an address delivered by Major C. E. Andrews, N.Z. S.C., to members of the Wellington Officers' Institute in Wellington last -week.

The publication of the details of the evacuation having been previously prohibited by the censor, much of Major Andrews' discourse was new to many of those present, and his remarks consequently were followed with the greatest interest. Major Andrews illustrated the positions being held by means of chalk and blackboard. The nights of the evacuation, he said, were bright moonlight, with more or less fog. They could see the motor-lighters, or beetles, as they called them, plying between the ships and the shore, but fortunately with the very best glasses it was impossible to tell whether the boats going out to the ships or those coming back were the full ones; neither, of course, could the Turks, who were still further off. The Turks evidently had the i'dea —it had been industrially circulated with a view to its reaching them—that the British were preparing to celebrate Christmas Day, 1915, by a grand attack. At any rate, on the nights of the evacuation they could hear the Turks hammering in stakes all along their lines for barbed wire entanglements, and they were thankful to feel that the enemy were preparing to repel, not to make an attack.

It was a five nights' job, said the lecturer. On the third they tdck off £2,000,000 worth of stores, but the balance had to be destroyed. Tie Turks, who had been shelling loavily that day, did not pick the fires as intentional, but claimed in an official -coamunique to have done the job

themselves by their shell fire. Major Andrews then described how the gigantic game of bluff was continued, and the men were successfully withdrawn. There were only five casualties at Anzac, against what they had reckoned would be something like 6000. They were certainly favoured by the weather. The night after the great operation was completed a violent storm came on, in which no boat could have lived at the piers in the bay. And that storm lasted for a week. He concluded by quoting a German acknowledgment -of the performance "as a hitherto unattainable masterpiece."