GREAT FIGHT AT SARI BAIR.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 October 1915, Page 6

GREAT FIGHT AT SARI BAIR.

FIERCE STRUGGLE AMID HILLS. SURPRISE FOR THE TURKS. MAGNIHCBNT COURAGE. GALLANT COLONEL MALONE'S DEATH. The fierce fighting at the 'Dardanelles on August 6 and 7, in which the New Zealanders played a distinguished part, is described in detail by Captain Bean, official Commonwealth correspondent. Dealing particularly with the work of the New Zealand Brigade, he says:— I nave told of the tremendous "punch" which,the Australians at the,south of our old Anzac position delivered against the Turks at Lonseome Pine. That "punch" drew two brigades of Turkish reserves straight from the village of Kejadere across the hills to the spot. It remains to tell the longest, and I suppose really the most important, story of all—the story of the movement out towards the crest of the main ridge. Near the northern end of the ridge our left flank of the New Zealanders' force, which landed at Suvla Bay on the night of which this article speaks—the night of August 6 and the early morning of August 7.

North of Anzac the land runs out on to flats. There are big crumpled hills the other side of those flats, and there are one or two minor hills in the middle of them near the village of Little Anafarta. Where the flat readies the sea coast it runs out into the long projecting horns enclosing the Bay of Suvla. This bay is about four miles north of Auzac, and here a strong new British force was to be landed on the night of August 0. A British force and some Indian troops had also been landed during the two previous nights at Anzac to reinforce the Australians and New Zealanders there for their move out northwards into the main slopes of Sari Bair. The first job to be tackled immediately after dark was to turn the Turks out of the nearer foothills. Later in the night columns would march out through the hills so cleared, and attack the further and higher slopes of the range.

For the first clearance of the foothills there was* chosen the New Zealanders' Mounted Rifle Brigade and the Maori Battalion. The work was to be done in silence and with bayonets, only as long as the darkness lasted. Of course, the Mounted Rifles, like the Australian Light Horse, were on foot. No horses had yet been seen at Anzac except a team o* about a dozen for helping to pull guns across any flat space.

INTO THE FOOTHILLS. Beyond the northern side of our triangle the New Zealanders had three strong posta on the seaward end of the nearer foothills. On the other end of one of these—the inland end of it—was a treneh which the New Zealanders took from the Turks some time back, and lost agan a couple of days later. The Turks had since made it very strong with barbed wire. Every night for a month or two a couple of destroyers, which were the only representatives of the fleet left with us, used to come close ■fn and bombard these trenches, and break up the wire. It was into this half-explored country that the New Zealand Mounted Rifles stole out at about half-past nine o'clock on the night of Friday, August 6. Bayonets were fixed, and there were strict orders of silence.

The destroyer had bombarded her same old trench that night as every other night. The Turks we suspected lay down in the bottom of the trench til] the shelling was over. It had just finished, and they were getting to their feet again when over the parapet on top of them came a line of silent clambering New Zealanders. A stuttering fire broke out, but the Auckland Mounted Rifles finished the affair, as ordered, with the bayonet. The Wellington Mounted Rifles were at the same time moving up the gully on their right, and Otago and Canterbury through the darkness on their left into country that was less well known. Canterbury was sent further north; Otago waa to go north also, hut to turn into the foothills earlier to clear a hill named after their colonel—Bauchop's Hill.

DISCOVERED. The moment you move north from the Ansae position the hills begin to move a little way back from the sea, leaving a Harrow stretch of flat between the hills and the sea. Canterbury moved out in extended order across this, two squadrons abreast, the line.of each troop following close on after the line ahead of it. They had four scouts out just ahead of them, and these scouts suddenly came on four other figures in the dark. It was a Turkish patrol. The Turks clearly thought that our men were the usual New Zealand patrol out on its nightly .business. They did not want to make a disturbance in the night any more than we did, so they came for our men with the bayonet. There was no sound in that strange duel, just four men fighting four with their bayonets in the dark. The Turks bayoneted one of our men in the jaw and another in the chest—neither fatally—before our fonv had managed to kill them. There was not a shot fired, and the column went silently on. v

But they were sure to be discovered before lon™. I'roiu away behind them there had broken out the firing of the Turks in the old New Zealand trench. That must have waked the Turks. A few minutes later the Otago regiment just behind Canterbury turned inland to attack its particular hill. A splutter of fire bloke out. Canterbury still going aeross the iiat came to a belt of land which was dimly lighted by the beam of the destroyers' searchlight directed on the main ridge over their heads. From the hill ahead of them which they were to attack came A rattle of rifle allots. Flashes were coming from two points along the top of it—evidently trenches. Turk? were' also firing on them from the hill wliieli .they were passing on their right. moment their colonel was wounded.

Canterbury parted inter two. One squadron went straight up to ihe point of the hill from the front. The other s.wung inland a little and then came up to the point from the rear. There was a machine-gun in the nearer frencb. and they were on it before the Turks could take the breech-block away. The Turkish escort for the gun stood its ground. and some" of the finest men» in the regiment were shot as they rushed it—fanners and farmers' sons from the plains about Christehurch. Their graves are there to-day. But they never answered with a tingle rifle ghet nor yet ft cheer.

They bayoneted the Turks and took tne machine-gun. The other squadron cleared a long communication trench down the slope of the hill to the north, and they then turned inland ana came up the length of the spur together, clearing four trenches in all as they went until their spur joined the two which Otago was attacking, and the two regiments met as had been arranged on the crest of the spurs they had cleared. TURKS TAK'E TO BLIGHT. The Turks were fleeing now in small broken parties through the foothills northward from gully to gully. Lots of them were left well behind our lines, some of them even in their dug-outs, wondering what in the world was happening. The Otagos had just such wild fighting along their spur. Their colonel, I believe, had just called out to them, "Come on boys, charge!" when he fell shot through the spine on, the hill that already 'bore his name. There were about half-a-dozen Maoris lying around the body of Captain Hay. When Otago and Canterbury joined they dug in to hold this left flank while the columns of infantry marched out through them to make their further attack. The whole hillside was littered with the remains of the Turkish bivouacs.

THE INFANTRY'S PART. Having dealt with the work of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles in clearing the foothills, Captain Bean goes on to tell of the advance of the infantry. By midnight four columns of infantry were moving out through the dark. The first column, which consisted of British infantry, and which moved along the beach or along and reached the northernmost spur that runs down to the sea from the main ridge, had no opposition at all. That northernmost column dug its line exactly two miles north of the northern side of our old Anzac triangle. The second column—the Fourth Australian Brigade—turned into the hills at a point about halfamile short of this, up the valley—the Agby Sere. The fourth and last column consisted of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade with Engineers and.a couple of moimtain guns. Jt headed straight up the gullies from the northernmost outposts. The Canterbury Battalion turned up th« southern gully, and the rest of this column up the northern one. Otago and Wellington were leading, with Auckland m reserve.

The Canterburys turned up its valley in the dark. The men could hear the voices of men coming down the southern side of the gullv. Thpv wore BritWvoice?, and could be clearly heard. It was the Mounted Rifles who had just finished clearing that spur.

UP THE BIG SPUR. The Otago Battalion had just made 250 Turks prisoners, and was on the top of the table-topped hill when the head of the Canterbury Battalion, which had been working up the southernmost valley, stumbled into it, and the two battalions together went for the high spur leading to Chanak Bair. It was daylight before they were halfway up and they saw sheer sand-cliffs and scruibcovered slopes towering above them, and far at the head of the gully the distant purple crestline of the main ridge. By eight o'clock they were on the summit of the spur, 600 ft above tne sea. The few Turks who were on the ridges bolted as they came* up. ._ Only a neck at the end of the spur —really a dip in the spur where it joined the ridge—separated them from the crestline of the main ridge. Chanak Bair was about 5500 yards away.

AUOKLANDERS ATTACK. At eleven o'elock the New Zealand infantry was ordered to attack the main ridge from its position on the spur in conjunction with a battalion of Gurkhas. (The only way from the spur on to the ridge was across the shoulder or neck before mentioned, which was only 30 yards or 40 yards wide. The Auckland battalion, which had previously been in reserve, was chosen for this attack. As it came across the neck a very heavy fire descended on it from the north—the Turkish artillery, from this position further up the main ridge to the north could see the men crossing the neck. Auckland held on until they reached a Turkish trench about 200 yds from the West in which they held on. It is "believed that 15 men actually managed to reach the Turkish trench on the summit. They never came back. The Gurkha attack was checked at the edge of the slope. By mid-day the attack had clearly reached its limit. So ended this stage of the fighting. We had extended our position by about two miles to the north. The Australians and New Zealanders who for the past four months had been clinging on to a triangle of gully and cliff covering just two-thirds of a square mile had now two additional square miles in which to stretch their legs. And when morning broke it was clear that a landing had been effected by, some British force a couple of miles further north of Suvla Bay. A further advance was to be made at dawn the next morning. The warships would bombard the crest of the ridge for three-quarters of an hour, and then the attack was to he made,.

OUT INTO THE RANGES. All that night the warships kept their searchlights steadily fixed on the ridge. At half-past three the bombardment started. Far to the north three battalions of the Fourth Australian Brigade were marching out, having left the remaining battalions to hold their lines behind them. They found facing them slopes that were almost sheer precipices —too steep to he climbed.

Further south of all the New Zealand Brigade, reinforced by British troops, was to attack the summit of Ciiauak Bair. The Wellington Battalion was to make tiie right of the line, and the Gloucester's the left.

It was the grey of dawn z.2 they marched out. There was just light enough to see the Wellingtons as they passed from our own l'neß, and everyone below waited with his he.irt in his mouth to hear the Turkish fire break out over them. But it did not break out. Presently the head of the battalion began to appear against the skyline—it si'i me.-l to bh marching in solid column up the top o; the ridge towards the north. The Wellingtons went straight up to the long Turkish communication trench, which runs down the backbone of the ridge. The trsnch was empty. They found in it a solitary machine-gun, with half-a-dozen Turks. The Turks said their regiment had marched from Aclii Baba the clay before, and had been put on this hill. But their <olonel had been killed on the hill, and the regiment was ordered to withdraw »t nine o'clock the night before, leaving only its machine-gun. The Gloucester, who went up some way to the left of the New Zealanders, came under a heavy enfilading fire from the north—it was from the northern spurs and summit of the ridge that all

the firing seemed to come this day. The Gloucester* were young troops, and for the first time under fire, but two companies of them held on, and reached .the trench just on the left of the New Zeahwders on the summit of Chanak Bair. Two other companies swung to the right, and entrenched a little hclow the Wellingtons, and on the south of the advanced line. The succeeding lines, as often happens, did not find it by any means so easy to reach the crest. The Auckland Mounted Rifles actually managed to get through and reinforce the firing line by the afternoon. The other lines were unable to get bo far.

WELMNGTONS' GREAT FIGHT. The AuCklands were needed by the time they arrived. The enemy had come down the communication trench, and had begun to attack with bombs. Our left was slowly driven in, and the communication trench at last became so hot that Colonel Malone, commanding the Wellingtons, decided to take his men out of it on to the surface of the scrub, and dig a fresh trench 15yds to the rear of it. This was done, and a shallow trench dug. Again and again the Turks came up from the south. All the attacks on the Wellington Battalion now came from the Anzac end of the ridge. They ran out of bombs; they ran out of water; they ran short of tools. Shrapnel showered on them, and the shallow trench they had dug had to be left, and another trench dug, because the first one was so full of dead and dying that it had become useless for protection. At four o'clock in the afternoon — about the time when the Mounted Rifles managed to get through to the front | line, an especially heavy rain of shrapnel was poured into it, and the colonel of the Wellington Battalion, Colonel Malone, who had for nearly two months past been the life and soul of the particularly hot corner of the line known as Quinn's Post, was killed. His successor, Colonel Moore, of the Otago Battalion, was wounded a little before midnight. The whole front trench on the left was blown in, and its occupants retired a little, but were rallied, and were in the trench again by the morning. On the Sunday morning the New Zealanders had reached the top of the ridge at Clianak Bair, and the Gurkhas had established themselves at a point 160 yards below the crest of the nameless peak further north. The New Zealanders and the Gloucester had gained further south, and moved against the stretch of summit that lay between the two.

THE VIEW PROM THE SUMMIT. Away beyond them was the view that" had been hidden from the Australians and New Zealanders all these long months. There it was all spread out below them like a map—the long white thread of the main road down the peninsula, with the traffic of a large army coming and going along it —motor-cars, waggons, traffic of all sorts. And <wer above it all, glistening in the light of the morning, the long ribbon of the Dardanelles. That evening, and during the hours .of the night the New Zealanders' infantry was relieved./ Two British battalions were put in. At the hour of dawn the Turks threw a tremendously heavy counter-attack against the Bri- 1 tish battalions holding the summit. Line after line of men came oTO the.crest, jnst north of Chanak Bair. Outlined against the morning sky, they seemed to be coming over shoulder to shoulder, seven or eight lines of them one after the other. And' then followed one of the most terrible scenes of slaughter that hag been seen in this campaign.

THE MOST TERMBLE SCENE. Hour after hour the guns tore open that slope until the whole face of it was altered, scarred, and bared, and pitted. For the greater part of the morning the Turks continued to push down the hill first in mass, later in single flies, finally in twos and threes. It was one of the bravest attacks that could be made. But by midday the artillery and machine-guns had beaten back the last dregs of it. But the attack had one result. It liad driven the'' garrison down from the trenches which the Wellingtons and the GHoucesters had won on the summit of Chanak Bair, and back on to the high spur 500 yds distant which the New Zealanders had won on the first night. The lines were now beginning to coagulate into the two settled rows of opposing trenches, in which every modern battle seems to end. The Gurkhas were withdrawn from the advanced lines they still retained below the nameless peak, in order to ensure a safer line along the spurs. The British had won their base to the north of us at Suvla Bay, and the Australians and New Zealanders had about quadrupled the I sizft. of their holding in Gallipoli, So ended the battle In the ranges. When next the Australians advanced to join hands with the British to the north of them a fortnight later it was a battle of trenches again—a rush from our trenches against a maze of trenches opposite them.