BACK TO GALLIPOLI.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1919, Page 5

BACK TO GALLIPOLI.

... BRITISH TROOPS LAND. TUBES HAND OVER GUNS. RELICS OF A GLORIOUS PAST. It is one of the fateful turns brought about by the cessation of war that our troops stand once more on the soil of Gallipoli, says a Loudon paper. Describing the new landing there, in a despatch sent from Lemnos, Mr. H. Collinson Owen writes:—

The contrast between the landing On November 9 and that other famous and heroin one of 1915 was as great as can he imagined. Our men landed, on a deserted peninsula, peopled only by British dead and filled with great memories that will live so long a 9 our race'endures. They stepped ashore immediately beneath the bows of the River Clyde, that gaunt and battered tramp from out of Whose Sides our men streamed under a storm of nradhine-gnn bullets. But there was nothing to oppose th«t landing this time. On the contrary, at the summit of the steeply rising 'beach, which We captured at such heavy cost, stood a little group of Turks looking down quietly on British troops disembarking. They were Turkish artillerymen Waiting to hand Over the heavy guns of Cape Hefies, which have for long been waiting ready in anticipation of a renewed British attack on the Dardanelles. We left Mttdros at four in the morning to see the landing, and arrived off Cape llelles about nine. i Later in the day, up towards the Narrows, we saw the refflairis of the submarine El 5, which fan ashore Whffitt j trying to ascend the Straits, and was j gallantly torpedoed frotit a launch by our ! own men under heavy lire. ! A little further up was the rusty [bottom of the Turkish battleship Megsudiyeh, looking like an immense turtle, I and marking on© of our submarine sueIcflsaes, that .caused much consternation Ito the enemy at the time. At various times we passed over deep waters that concealed the remains of sunk British and French battleships, the Ocean, Irresistible, Majestic, Goliath, Triumph, and Bouvet —a small part of the price we paid in our endeavor to force the Dardanelles and give Russia the help she so urgently asked for. We anchored just off the beach wlierfi the River Clyde was run ashore, immediately oirtiude the breakwater formed by the stripped skeleton of an ancient French battleship Massena, and au old hulk of a Messagerie steamer. A motor-boat took us ashore, and we passed under the sides of the scarred and gallant old tramp. The wooden gangway that fad dowti to the lighters waiting alongside, and down.which the very first meii who landed on Gallipoli ran or stumbled, is still intact, and it was just beyond this stairway down to death and glory that we stepped ashore from the launch. It was strange, indeed, to put foot on the narrow shore, realising how much we had paid to take it and find it now" completely deserted. Turkish troops occupying the peiuffsula had been removed some days before, and, for the time being, not a single Turk was to be seen. V Beafill along to Cape Belles, and so to W Beach, Is as unlovely and barren a strip of coastline a-f can be imagined. One wondered again how we had ever been able to land oil it, and how we had been able to* live and remain there. Above and behind US to out right were the remains of the old fort of Sedd-01-Baßhr, winch the eet knocked to pieoes in the first ibofflbardmcnt.