BATTLES IN TURKEY.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 September 1915, Page 11

BATTLES IN TURKEY.

FURY OF THE FIGHTING. WORSE THAN IN FLANDERS. The violence of the fighting in the Dardanelles campaign is described in a letter written by Corporal R. M. Beswick', 3rd (Auckland) Infantry Company. He landed on April 23, aild after having been under (ire for -20 days was invwlhled to Egypt, suffering from rheumatism. Corporal Beswick stayed in hospital, and was then sent to Zeitoun to recuperate, and when he wrote he was endcavoriug to obtain pcrmiesioi to return to the front. ' Corporal Beswick writes that during the month he passed ou the peninsula he took part in two battles, each lasting over three days, and two bayonet charges, in which the Auckland company lost over HO men killed and wounded. "When I mention battles," he remarks, '"it docs not mean that there was no fighting between them. The fighting was continued alll the time, but specific battles mean terrific encounters in which each force is striving for a superiority of fire, and one cannot expose the head but for a second to fire without being hif. The first I was in lasted four days and nights, and we had notiiing to eat but biscuits, and water the color of tan polish. Men of the regular troops told us that the fighting they aa.w around Mons, Malines, Ypres and Antwerp was not to be compared with what they have come through and overcome in the Dardanelles. After the three attacks on AeJii Baba, nearly all the old soldiers who wore the South African medal, tore the ribbon off their tunic in disgust saying that South Africa was only a picnic, and they would not wear the'ribbon again." Corporal Beswick stales that after the first day's fighting he found eight or ten bullet-Hio-les in his clothes, On one occasion he was buried by the explosion of a sHicll, but a comrade dug him out, and saved his life.