THE TURK AT BAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1915, Page 5

THE TURK AT BAY.

*»■ TRENCH WARFARE ON GALLIPOI* THE OLD AND THE NEW. (FVob Sfaloota Ross, Official War Cornf 1 spondent with N.Z. Force*). July 30. Thera can be no doubt now that we' ' have the Turk at bay on Ms own Pen* insula. For some time past he ha« been very quiet, and a threatened attack from a reinforced Turkish Army has not, so fan', materialised, We were told that < Euver Pasha was getting together another :i.nny ol 100,000 men to drive na " into the sea. We may have doubts » to whether Ms new army has arrived in anything like the numbers mentioned, but wo know wo have not been driven

into the sea and that we aire not likely to be. In the meantime, our forced also are, more or less, marking time, bat before this reaches New Zealand you will most certainly have heard news of importance. Meantime, there is littie for the war correspondents to write about. jJn modern warfare thero arc periods during which whole armies sit down in

ditches and look at each other—genially through periscopes—over earthy or ■ uaudbagg-.'d parapets, neither side daring to show a head, or even a bit of a bead.

Wj have reached thai stage on the Peninsula—both at Hellea and at Anne. During such times an army, to use a colloquialism, becomes "bored stiff." Tto monotony is varied only by bomb-throw-ing iu places where the rival forces aft) hut t, few yards apart, and by 'bo'mbttd* / ing on sections where hundreds of yarns intervjue. Occasionally, however, the elrrapnel and the high explosives 'burst with a diabolical accuracy on an enemy 1 trench only a few yards beyond our own ■ lines. At this latter game we have 1 s> decided advantage over the lurk, for mat, only have we more guns and sheila. " on land, but we 'have also the ships thafe patrol the Gulf of Saros. The Turk, aparently, has to be sparing of his field. gun ammunition, and there are now olstf indications that he is endeavoring to. exercise a greater care in huebaadbjg . his cartridges for rifle Are. A refuge* who reached' an 'adjoining island from Constantinople the other day, brought news that matter* were coming to .4 bad pass there, and from other sources T leai-n that there is a spirit of gloom in the capital, and the people oannot understand why no British pneomra aire' arriving there. '< : .

The New Zealanrters, in the other troops, 'are anxious to Wvb another go at the enemy, and on *H ■hands disappointment is expi-essed tiyit he has not come on. For the time b*« . ir.g, the safest place on the battlefield it the trendies. That is one of the ano,* ', maliea of modern warfare. But *a change will come over the scene pre <png, , ■ THE NEW AND THE OLD. . '' The other day I was able to inspoct the remains of an inflammatory *heU thai was fired into our area of defence.

Thq charred case was throe inches In diameter and 15 hmhes long. Tho shell, which evidently came from a mortar, made a small hole in the ground and covered an area of Bft diameter in flames. The same evening, at Acui Baba, the en-

emy threw liquid into one of the French ireuohesi send endeavored un-succecsfully to set it alight with bombs. Thia iPcninsula, as everyone knows, has been the scene of battles dating ' away bock to tihe time of the Venetian ■Doges, and probably even to piehistorie times, wlien tlie real troglodytes lived ;n habitations somewhat similar to thorn •.!•!;; by the New Zealanders on the onto;.' flanks of Sari-Bair. It is somewhat ftivuige that in the warfare of the present, day, when all the destructive inventions of modern science are let loose upon the battlefield, one of our men dijrjfir.:.' nonr the New Zealand Field Ambulaii « Station should come upon a relic of the old fighting in Hie shape' o! .a round stoi'.< cannon-ball. Stone can-non-bslh were, however, in existence on •iho Peninsula in comparatively recent yo?j-n, for Lewd DiirTcrin, on his w»y t«t Constantinople, in 1881, states <fcb*t' on reaching the Dardanelles he paid a visit to the fort where he saw two enormous !»iiKi, that threw stono baM» Trice tbost you sea at the doorsteps of country luiuse.3." ''lndeed." he adds in a letter to LaJy Darkey, "I have four of them at Ohuidefooye." Apropos, a friend here, who was in ths last Ba-lkaa wait, tells me ihat similar stous cannon-balls used an the time of Napoleon, were dug up, three iA the Albauian trenchej, and at the old forts put or. I of action by our '•battleship* ki Cape Helles there are rtlH iaa»y imcii cannon-balls tin be seen. TURKISH PRISONERS.

WJiils ihc people of Con<nntinpoh»«re piuslixl p.t the non-diTiva] of BWti«li prisoners there, they would—could they visit the Peninsula—be enlightened rejjerding the other plm<-e of the question. The Allied forces h.ue talcejj quite a, number of prisoneis, and there hjive been several deserters from tl;> Turkish. lines. J-iutJi prisoneis n<i one hm «een appear .strong and luuh mid well fed, though rather down 'it he 1 in the mat-

[tei- of clothing.' Their clothes are nuich too heavy for a, summer <«iii|iHign. and ifreqnenrty one sees a ma.t with his bare .toes sticking ihraujih his boots. Most <*' the prisonwa <i« only top pleased to have got away from (heir own flringlinv. Onv who surrendered to the Otajo| Battalion the other day complained of ill-trentirwwt from his own non-cominii-

sioned officers. He hi id his corporal had ;;c.:iiTcllod with him and had bit hiin.

A well-known 'ider in (he show riijga -if New Zealand. Trooper deorge HamU--I.H! (.'illaniieis, of llih Wellington Mount- [■ I Rifles, lins died of wounds. He was ! t !;c sewnd son of Mi'. Murdoch K. Oil-i-indere, of Upper Kiccartou. Trooper Uilhmders. who was burn at Orecndale in ■rune, IS7II, was educated at the l.ittte River main school. When the present war commenvod lip was farming with his [■brothers in the Cisborne district and joined the 3rd Reinforcements in Wellington. He was wounded on August 28, and died on September lath. He, fought in South Africa during the Boer War with the New South Wales Ugh* Horse.