TURKO-ITALIAN WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 206, 28 February 1912, Page 7

TURKO-ITALIAN WAR.

HORRORS OF WAR. WHAT THE ITALIANS CONTEND WITH IN TRIPOLI. UNDER THE BLACK FLAG. London, December 30. Telegrams received froraTripoli give an account'of an action between the Italian and Turkish forces at Benghazi on Christmas Dav morning. The Turks began the advance against the Italian position at an early hour, and by 10 o'clock several independent bodies of the enemy, whose force amounted altogether to several thousand men, supported by artillery, were facing the Italian eastern front, extended along a line from the sea to Berka. They advanced in the direction of Foiat and redoubts Nos. 4 and 3.

Fire was withheld by the Italians until the enemy were within 2000 yards' range, when the artillery opened on them and checked the advance all along the line, obviously inflicting considerable loss. The Italian warships lying off Benghazi were unable to assist the garrison owing to the high sea which was running. The Turks withdrew at sunset to the oasis. The Italians had no casualties. When darkness fell the weather improved, the sea subsided, and the warships illuminated the surrounding country with their searchlights. No trace of the enemv could be sees.

An appaling picture of what the Italians have to contend with in their campaign in Tripoli is furnished by correspondents at the front. The representative of the Daily To! - graph says:— "The Italians have adopted the def. •, sive method of a continuous line of eartfr works," he goes on to say. "These now encircle Tripoli and the outskirts from sea to sea, the Marabout Point on the east to Fort Sultnaieli on the west. It would appear to me to have been much safer and wiser to have constructed a chain.of stout forts, securing the intervals by wide and low trenches, and using mobile columns to repel any concentrated a.ttack or to root out any incursive Arab bands.' , ■.

'War's turbid glare projects, in, strange relief man's passions and complex nature. Italy (and her soldiers) have made what it.'thought to be a discovery, one which, a|a»!, is already too well known and fajnjliar to England and her arms.,,,lt is that savage man is most horribly, ariid revolting! ycruel, worse even than the wild beasts. They have come to realise that they are fighting under the black flag, as is always the ease where a civilised is opposed to an untutored native race and fanaticism feeds the flames of war.

"The Italians have come to know that, their soldiers, many of them wouaded !Hie», captured on October 23 last, some of whom, -it was. hoped, might be yet 'aliV3 ! as prisoners, have all been most brutally and fiendishly done to .death., which were thought to be ex'efcised only by wild Red Indians or inhuman Chinese, have been wrought upon them, and every indignity that maniacal hatred could suggest has been perpetrated upon these hapless victims whilst living:: and,upon their dead bodies. .November 26, a Sunday, a month 'Mi the. day from the withdrawal of the JtaJianJinea to Sidi Misri and Hamidieh; the.\fifst serious forward movement on a' igfßWjral scale was undertaken. A few hfflwfoeds of Arabs broke through the' Italian-lines east of Bu Meliana near the house of D.jevral Bey, where tho 84th bßegiflient were on auard. Two or three '.officers of that regiment were killed, to- { hgetfar with thirtv men and many of •■th:ek:J)Ddies were stripped, dismembered,,] 3 andt.-mutilated. The occasion was m-\ ■ deemedbv the gallant defence v>f many,] of. .the officers and men of the 84th Regi-, msnt, and the subsequent repulse of the j incoming. Arabs, a number of whose' bodies were left upon the field. Just he,'J fore sunrise the guns of the fleet Winced a vigorious shelling of the desert .•P.v.JFort Misri and the Palmery in and; near the Henni. ! ■ '-: SNIPINC THE ENEMY.

----The Oth Brigade, under Brigadier--Crenenil Rocca, had been quietly assent' bled before dawn behind the trenches and works near Bu Meliana and Sidi Misri Every man was at his post to Help if called upon, should the enemy appear m force. Amid the booming of gi*ns and the crash of bursting shells was held over the graves of the Italian dead, buried near Djevra] Bey's hdufie;' Mass was celebrated by a priest, an army chaplain, whilst the promise of a rosy and perfect day was tinting, the Eastern heavens. Then the desert celumn, led by General Rocca, moved out to the south, and swung towards the east. It.comprised four batteries of mountain artdlery and two of field guns—quickfirers—and the 50th, 52nd and 23rd Regiments (each of three battalions), with part of the 37th Regiment in support, and two squadrons of cavalry. This force was really directly supported from within and without the * works and trenches by the 40th, the 84th and 82nd Regiments. Further east, but later on, the 18th Regiment and the Alpine troops, Fenestrell, co-operated in the attack. "The Turks have constructed 'various slight works, gun emplacements and trenches to the east and south upon the hillocks and sandhills, their .purpose clearly being to oppose any advance upon Ain Zara, a town seven miles from here (Tripoli), and well within the range of the battleships' Gin and lin guns. Scouts, in fact, report that the place has already been laid in ruins by the fleet's fire. But aviators report that convoys and bodies of Arabs still hover about Zara. The cavalry made a detour, and part of the column took ground a kilometre or so south of Bu Meliana, and entrenched, whilst moving in echelon and supported by heavy artillery fire, the 50th, 37th and 52nd Regiments, turned eastward towards the wrecked Agricultural College buildings and Fort Misri. "The enemy sniped vigorously, but seemed to be in no great number. A body of regular Turkish troops, however, came in contact with the 50th Regiment, and a brisk skirmish ensued. The troops' orders were not to attempt to carry the enemy's detached works nor to seek to penetrate towards Ain Zara. A lull, therefore, soon occurred in the action, as the Italians holding eastward carried all the outbuildings of the Agricultural College, and then proceeded to envelop Fort Misri about nine a.m. "I was enabled to witness most of the subsequent part of the day's operations. The Turks brought up a few light field guns, and kept firing shrapntl, but obviously, although some of the guns were evidently new and well served, the fire was npt effective. About 9.20 Fort Misri, which is less than a kilometre from the Marabout Tomb at Sidi Misri, held by the Italians, was captured. The 52nd Regiment closed in upon the work from the south, the Alpine Regiment from the north, assisted by other troops, and the Arab defenders quickly bolted, abandoning the work. "About 9.30 a.m., when it became known that Fort Misri had fallen, another division advanced eastward, moving out from Feshlumm and Sharashat, etc., to carry the Henni Plateau, situate upom the high open ground a kilometre farther eastward. The attacking troops in this instance were the much-tried 11th Bersaglieri, the Alpine Regiment, and the Grenadiers, supported by the 93rd Regiment and some of the 18th Regiment, upon their left. They moved very slowly and cautipujlyj.tp avoid ambuscades, al-

would have preferred to rush the whole position. Empty sandbags were carried t>> improvise defence works if needed. But there was no strong nor obstinate resistance, except at one point. HORROR OF HORRORS.

"Some twenty-seven Arabs had shut themselves up in a house, and, , firing rapidly, checked the advance for a time at that point. A gun was soon brought up, and the building was blown about the enemy's ears, the natives perishing in its ruins. The work of clearing the ground was at once commenced, and before nightfall Henni Plateau and Fort Misri had Been made secure for the Italian troops. How rapidly and carefully these 'soldiers of the Peninsula work to secure and set their lines in admirable order of defence is only just short of marvellous. Without actually knowing or hoping to learn in time for this letter, I will set the Italian losses down at fifty to seventy killed and wounded, and the Arabs as fully as many. The official account, I am told, does not run to even a score of Italians killed, though one hears of it running'into many hundreds of Arabs slain.

"I have been over many of the battlefields where mad fanaticism has for the moment triumphed, from Baker's El Teh, where there lay nearly 3000 mutilated bodies, marked in the course, and in the aftermath of the Dervishes' frenzy. Elsewhere I have also seen thousands of the remains of the victims of the blood lust and bestial spirit of hatred and revenge that pursues even the lifeless bodies of wild, savage natures. It is a type/ that endures in belated instances of modern life. But in all my time—save in China and amongst the Red Indians, the Apaches and the Comaches—l have never known the enemy cruelly to delight in maiming and torturing the living foe.

"It has remained for me to see abundant evidences of this fiendish trait in human nature perpetrated - in Tripoli by Moslems, probably wild Arabs, upon utterly helpless Italian soldiers and doctors and attendants under the Red Cross engaged in succoring the wounded. During the last three days over thirty individual cases have come under my personal notice. There were probably as many more, for the unfortunate men were of those who fell into Arab hands on or immediately after the action of October 23.

"It was near the/ mosque by the Henni I had my attention first called to the bodies of those who had fallen into the hands of the fiends of the desert. Two Soldiers, Bersaglieri, had been tied to a wall, crucified as upon a cross, and afterwards riddled with bullets. It is needless to dwell upon the nature of the further atrocities which savage Moslems invariably practise upon the bodies of Christians, or on the lesser brutality of rudely mutilating the victims' heads and, linibs after death. A native boy found with the soldiers had been crucified; his hands and feet bore testimony to the passing of the nails through these parts, and the body lay mangled, fused burial by the murderers and torturers.