NAVAL.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 25 July 1917, Page 6

NAVAL.

WITH THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

Captain P. Hall-Thompson, C.M.G., R.N., Naval Advisor to the New Zealand Government ,related in Wellington the other evening a few incidents that occurred during a naval cruise round about the Gulf of Suez, the Mediterranean, and Persian Gulf.

For several months,' he said, they were engaged in watching the Syrian coast, with a view to preventing the Turks constructing fortifications, etc. Whenever they saw a man digging a hole they fired at him, and thus had a little target practice every day. “It helped to pass the time agreeably. ” On a later occasion they observed a Turkish force marching along the coast. They opened fire, bagging 72 Turks u ith one shot. The Turks, in reply to these repi-esentations, ” notified that certain Englishmen, who were in their hands, would be executed. Ho replied, reminCTThg them that the British held so many more Turkish officers and men tis prisoners of war, and were therefore in a position to retaliate.

After engaging in operations on the North African coast, they were mixed up in the engagements at Aden, where they lost a good many men, mainly owing to the intense heat. A man who sat down there when tired never got up again, the temperature of the sand being over 200 degrees. Finally, they went to the Persian Gulf, which was not a very pleasant place and which he never wished to see again. The record temperature they had there was Isodeg. at midnight, which was “a little trying.” The Germans there, he declared, were extraordinarily efficient. They not only learned the language, but lived the same life as the Persians, and observed the same religion.

The Mesopotamia campaign presented mainly a problem of transport. During the first attempt on Bagdad all sorts of small river craft appeared from nowhere, but those wore not enough, and a vast change was brought about before the launching of the second attempt. As indicating this, ho ■j.atod tnat on the day after our troops entered Bagdad no less than 6000 tons ef provisions were landed by riven iinr.sport in that famous city.