THE CAMPAIGN IN TURKEY.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 January 1916, Page 3

THE CAMPAIGN IN TURKEY.

SOME NOTES IN A QUIET TIME THii WAR CORRESPONDENTS' CAMP. iSOMBARDING GALLIPOLI. AIR-CRAFT IN ACTION. (From Malcolm Rose, Official War Co: v respondent with the N.Z. Forces). , November 20. It is drawing on towards Christmas, and the weather lias got much colder. It is really healthier than the great heat, and the flies have almost gono. Unfortunately, though, we are rather behindhand with our winter preparations. Galvanised iron and winter clothing are badly needed. We arc told they'are on the way. The French have already made themselves snug for the winter.

The days aiul the weeks go by now in comparative inaction. Five days ago, some Turkish trenches and a bomb station in the neighborhood of the Krithia Nullah were taken by a coup dc main without previous bombardment, after the explosion of three mines. The units mainly concerned were tlie 4th and 7th Royal Scots, the 7th and Bth Scottish Rilles, and the Ayrshire Yeomanry, The Turks had 30 men buried by the mine explosions, and also lost others by rilie and machine gun fire. The ships and the field artillery, by firing on the enemy's reserve trenches and enclosed works, prevented a counter-attack. There were 70 dead in the captured Turkish positions. Our casualties totalled under liftv. This is the main bit of fighting for some weeks.

As I write these linos I am. in the "Chateau Pericles," as wo correspondents have named the little Greek house in which we occasionally reside on & near-by island. It is the pride of a little village that lias scattered its rude stone houses, without rhyme or reason, over the shoulder of a typically Ualkan hillside, and it lias attained this pre-eminence because it is two-storied-having one room oil top of two others—and also because it lias glass in sonic of the panes of its lew windows. It has a clayey lloor, and thick walls of ■undressed stone, brown and grey. Needless to say, we are not the only inhabitants! But, in various ways, we are gradually getting rid of the others! It is only in war that one begins to realise what a rich benefactor to humanity the Karl of Keating has been. We tali him Earl Keating; though, of course, he is not really an Earl. But. certainly, !>,» is equally deserving of the title with some others one could name. A STORM. IX THE GCLF.

The worst of coming over to the island is that you are apt to be marooned there. There is a storm on now and 1 am thankful [ was not crossing on a trawler that hiss just been sunk—with our mails 011 board—in the Gulf. Fortunately, no lives were lost, though even that is a small matter in these strange days in which we live. The world seems all topsy-turvy; but we live in confidence, for \vc know that though one trawler or a dozen may go to the bottom, these hardy fellows from the North Sea and the Dogger Bankscorning storms and even" shot ami shell—will keep the way open for us till the crack of doom, if need be. One rather pities them to-night, though. Ugh! How the wind shrieks around the gables of the Chateau Pericles; Glad am Ito be within the font walls of rough but solid stone, mortared with the puddled brown volcanic loam of the island. The trenches, and even my leaky dug-out 011 the Peninsula, could scarcely be comfortable. The wind moans and splashes of rain come with it, round the walls. It whistles through the cracked or paneless windows of "the Chateau," while tho thunder growls aibove it all. The elements, as well as the nations, are at war. A blinding Hash has just lit up the gloom, and the crashing thunder cornea like the sound of a 14-inch monitor's guns, only reverberating longer amongst the rocky hills of the island. Turner—Xeviuson's servant.—the mild-est-mannered of men. who was in five bayonet charges at ITr-lles, and ha- a fail' toll of Turks to his bayonet, lias lifted the latch and come in, with a swirl of wind and rain, to tell me that our Greek cook is "drownded out." "We'll 'ave to shift 'is cook-house round the other way, sir," he says, adding cheerfully, "There's another storm cornin' up oil top 0' this one, sir." lie lias come in to get a candle, so that the cook may sec the full extent of the di* ' comfort and misery in which lie exists, upon—for him—a princely salary. But one is fearful, if there is much mnrc of this, that our Greek cook w.ll be a Levanter! There is qnly one thing that may keep liim with us—the fear of his having to join the Greek army. As a matter of fact, though a Greek, he is, like so many more Creeks, a Turkish subject. He is a refugee frjm Ckailak—built over the buried Abydos—.'ml bis wife is in Constantinople. She must be having rather a thin time of it there,

THE AIR-CRAFT. For some time now the Taubes have not been flying over us, and the bombdropping Fritz has bcta'.-c-.-n h;t>;so!f to another sphere of influence. Possibly away beyond Salonika, r,i the Bulgarian frontier, he is finding something to do. 'Not that he e\c - did us very much damage on the [Peninsula. The Turks, fortunately, have very few Tauten, and the chances are that such as they have are piloted by their Teutonic friends. We, on the other hand, have increased our flying squadron, and our airmen have been putting in some deadly work. To see one, and sometimes two, of our air-craft ■•spotting'' for the guns, or hovering high above the. Turintfi trenches,'with the thistledown puffs of tile enemy shrapnel bursting near them, is indeed a thrilling sight, even in these days when one becomes indifferent to sights and sounds that but a few months ago would have held us enthralled. A man hears the drone of an engine far albove, and does not even take the trouble to go to the door of the dug-out to see what it is all about. Sometimes you will note a soldier pausing in his work, sea/sing the blue for a half-minute or so, and then, after remarking to his mate, "Turk," or "One of ours," as tbc case may be, resume his job, with the blase air of one of the "originallanding" men. But the Turk has probably spotted a camp or a gun emplacement, and on the following day the enemy shell# will be landing with ft

weary from howitzei's well down on the reverie slopes of the Sari Bair range system. There w*s one such battery firing—from the vicinity of Bogliali, apparently—that sent its eightinchers along day after day, and our people could not get on the'tnudv of it at all. !

Now that the weather Ims broken, our airmen must necessarily spend a good deal of broken time indoors. There ii no use going out in n gale no r i n Hying, when you have to t>oar a.bove the clouds. But let the winds die dowu, and the sira shine out, and then; one after another, you will see our planes mounting heavenward, and making a bee-line across the Gulf and the rugged Peninsula, oven, it. may be, to the vicinity of Constantinople itself. One evening, in the "River Clyde," at Cape Helios, I watched seven planes follow each other down the Dardanelles, for all the world like a flight of birds coming to roost on their islaud home. They had been on a serious and successful mission.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. Quite recently the Navy and the Royal Naval Air Squadron have been busy along the line of the Turko-Bul* garian communications. The naval gmis bombarded the railway bridges ami junctions at Bodoma and Dedeagatch, ak road-bridge at Kavak, and the important supply depot at the town of Gallipoli. The air-craft, spotting for the ship's guns, recorded four direct hits in succession on the Gallipoli flout mills, at a range of over eleven miles. Convoys and columns of the enemy moving near the coast have been greatly harried, manv casualties have been caused, and traffic on some of the roads has been made impossible during day-, light. Meanwhile our airmen have been doing some brilliant work attacking roads, bridges, and concentration camps. The railway bridge at Kuleli Burgas has again been damaged by their bombs. Some of our air-craft have succeeded in dropping heavy bombs upon Turkish camps, a plan that not only causes severe casualties, but also considerably affects the morale of the troops, especially when they arc fresh troops moving to the scene of action, A favorite ruse is to drop hand-grenades upon the Tifi-kish camps, whereupon the Turks rush to cover in adjacent gullies, only to have hundredpound bombs dropped upon them with disastrous effect. The other night a particularly brilliant flight of four hours and a-half's duration was made, and 1001b bombs were dropped from a height of only 400 ft upon the railway bridge at Kuleli Burgas. The line was cut, and a valuable reconnaissance of Turkish camps was made right up to Adrianople. "The flight," says an official communique, "7s certainly one of the longest night operations yet undertaken by air-craft in war, and possibly coitstitutea a record." A DARING ASCENT. w* '• For still, daring, and resource our airmen certainly bear the palm in war, and I doubt if our French Allies, brilliant aa they are in such feats, in any way excel them. One day last week, on the Peninsula, I watched a plane calmly sailing over the extreme lelt of the Anzac zone and the British right. Shot after shot was sent after it by the Turkish gunners on the adjacent hills. . Its line of flight was dotted with drifting pull's of bursting shrapnel, but } the pilot never thought of retreat. /He altered his elevation, swerved to right and to left, and came back upon his tracks above the slowly-drifting fleecy pull's of the exploded shells. The case of one eattu 1 screaming down through the air, and hit the ground with a resounding thud only a few yards away from us. Presently a lucky Turkish shot got him. but from a height ot ISOOO or 7000 feet ho made a magnificent volplane away from the Turkish position and out to sea, hovered awhile, and then, banking gracefully, returned shorewards, bringing his plane safely down in the shallow water of the surfing sandy bay just south of Suvla. Disentangling himself he waded to dry land. Stretcherbearers rn?hert to his lair, and a naval pinnace dashed shoreward. In a remarkably short time, he was on board the hospital ship. He not only saved i his own life, but his plane as well.

SHIPS THAT PASS. Both amongst English and colonial officers and men one meets pinny line fellows in this war. All sorts and conditions of people, from all walks of life, seem to have come out lierc, And tliev seem to have drifted along from everywhere— ev«i from Germany! Lords and honorables, Privy Councillors and members of Parliament—all are represented. There seems to have ..been a glamor that from the outset drew men to the Dardanelles—or, at least, as near as they can get to tliem. Ono is not long in finding' out, also, that it is not. alone the Germans tha't. possess all tlie talents. The Engliflh are not supposed to be good linguists. Yet here are Englishmen speaking nearly all tlie languages—Greek and Turkish, Arabic and Hindustani, in addition to several of the European tongues. Just about the time that an unpublished poem by Macaulay of immortal memory was being offered in the Times for sale in aid of some war fund, I met here a relative of that great historian. As a matter of fact, he is 011 the Xew Zealand staff. He did splendid work in charge of the ammunition train when we were struggling desperately on C'hunuk Bail - in the sweltering early clays of August. Practically, ho ran the whole show, keeping the mule trains going day and night in face of great danger, and even himself carrying ammunition into the firing-line. T.ord help me if he over r,ces tlie fact in print! Tie speaks Arabic, Greek, Turkish, English, French, Italian and German, and lie sketches delightfully, even un* der shell tire.

Travelling to and from hero by ( land and sea, one is continually meeting such men. 'We meet and our ways part, never to meet again, or perhaps to meet in unexpected circumstances. Sometimes we do not take the trouble even to ask each other's names. We are pawns in the game, moving about at the behest of some higher power. At times we are thrown together for weeks, and we seem on the eve of lasting friendship, becoming niore and more intimate as the days go by. Then, suddenly, there is an end of it all—a Turk-, ish bullet, a bomb, or a bursting shell. Others moving across the board—sick or wounded —out of the game altogether, for the time being. We lost all trace of them. Down the winding sap they go in the sagging stretchers, and until the ship, with the green stripe and the red crosses showing on her whitepainted sides, sails away not even they themselves know, their destination. For the sick it Is saddest of all—they have not even the honor of a wound to console them in their desolation. But bullet or ooiub, enteric or jaundice,, it is all the same-rthey pre 'ships thgt Tjass in the night, '* - V-Sti