"TALK ABOUT FIGHT!"

Taranaki Daily News, 17 July 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

"TALK ABOUT FIGHT!"

INDKK SHRAPNEL FIRE. A CORPORAL'S THOUOIITS. "I WuNDER IK,THIS Wild; <:KT MK." Corporal A. Mcl'herson, of the Otago Infantry, late of Christchurch, wis wounded at Oailipoli, and is in hospital at Alexandria, lie has a wound down his hack about six inches long, reaching to liis ribs.. It was caused bv a shrapnel bullet. When he wrote on' April ."> he expected to be about again in a few weeks.

Corporal Mcl'herson was "in it" for three days on the* ; peninsula. He and his mates were lighting from the Sunday until the Tuesday, when lie was hit at 5 p.m. "Talk about light!" he says. •'The Australians and New Zealander's can hold their own with any of then). The officers can hardly hold them in the trcnehcsT The Turks must have had three to one, as in some of their bayonet charges thcy seemed to me like a big wall, all coming together. In any ease, we always drove them back. I learnt from the wounded who keep coming in that our boys have taken the oll'ensive and have driven them back a. long way from the place where 1 was knocked out.

'•Some people think that the Turks are not good lighters, but as far as ride tire is concerned you can pepper them all day and they won't shift, but they won't let you get. near them with the bayonet: and if you charge, and you are one to three, they will clear out and practically give up any position whatever. I think that the sight of our bayonets over the top of the trench made them fall back even more than our rifle 1 lire during their charges against us, "Shrapnel is the worst kind of lire, especially when there is nothing doing, and you can only lie down and let it burst over you. You have nothing to occupy your mind, and that keeps' you thinking all the time when tliey come, 'I iv ler if this devil will get me!' So you see how rotten it must be. All the time vnti are quite, helpless. Ride fire is different. 'When yon are in the thick of it you think of nothing ibut light, and not until it. is all over do you realise that bullets have been Hying around you all the time. Of course, in slow tire, or what they eall sniping at each other, it is different': you notice everything that goes on around you, and keep talking to your mate, saying, for instance: 'There are a couple of Turks behind that hill over there,' or •There's one behind a bush.' or 'That wan a close shave," especially when a bullet roots up the ground under your l nose or cuts a twig ofl' a. piece of bush beside your head.

"H is marvellous what close shaves you see. T saw one chap with a bullet through his ear, so close to his head that you couldn't put a hole much nearer with a. liatpin. f have known men with hides in their bullet pouches, and have even known the cartridges to be. set off without the men lieing scratched. Others have had their rilles broken and their bayonets snapped off. As for holes in hats, we see plenty of them. T have had three of my mates shot dead beside me, and three more wounded, one in the back, another in the .chest, and one with his arm broken.

"Tn our ward there is a Tommy who was in the retreat from Mons. and be j*iys that Mons was nothing compared to our affair at the Dardanelles.. I don't know what -the losses of the Australians and New Zeiilandei's were—the cables will tell you long before we get to know - -hut from what I have seen myself 1 know that they Were heavy."