ENVER'S ATTACK.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15369, 28 August 1915, Page 9

ENVER'S ATTACK.

TURKISH MISCALCULATION

From Captain C. V. Bean, Official Correspondent with the Australian Expeditionary force.)

(Rights secured by "Tho Press. )

GABA TEPE, July 3

Tuesday, June 29th. was an exceptionally quiet day. The Turks did not know what to make of our attack of the day before. For the first time since the first week we had look?d like making a serious advance, and as the British were now making a considerable push from the south, they were not at all Buro what we might b? up to. They knew we had been tunnelling towards one of their trenches, just as we knew they had been tunnelling to moet us etveh side could clearly hear the other picking.

The Twks showed evorv sign of nervousness. Ju6t after dark a dust storm sprang up—the first of several nights of stormy weather brought on by tho summer's heat —and in the dust they could not properly soe tho space between their tranches and ours. Immediately the first gust came ovcr v to them the Turks in the trenches which we had advanced against the day before »2t up a heavy fire, and kept it up for nearly two hours, until that storm had subsided. After that there was almost dead silence for three-quar-ters of an hour. It may be that this Turkish fire had also another reason. I>uring tho first fow days of our landing wc learnt that one of the commonest Turkish tricks was to make a great deal of noise at a part of the line, and then attack somewhere else. They used to blow buglss and shout commands, and exhort one another opposite one point, and sometimes attack there —but as often as not at somo other distant point. This night almost all rifle firing was at the south end of the line, and it finished at half-past eleven. Exactly three-quarters of an hour later the scntric s at tho northern angle of our line heard shouts of "Allah 1" "Allah!" The trenches here at one point are only about the length of a crickct pitch apart, and by tho time the cry had been once repeat3d there was a rush of Turks over the parapet of our nearest saps. This was in the New Zealand portion of our line —the northern sid.3 of the triangle—which at the time was garrisoned by the 3rd Light Horse Brigade. Wo had been sapping out towards the enemy at two points—the enemy knew those saps, of course, as well as we did, having the parapets of newly-turned earth rightunder their noses —and apparently their intention was lo take these two saps and as much of the trenches behind thom as they oould in tho first instance, and then make their further attack from there. They came providad with any amount of food —one man with a haversack full of bombs, aitother with a handbag full of ammunition, another with a pack of cards —all of them with olives, tinned beef, plenty of dried figs, and water-bottles. The Turk lias been untrue to all the ordinary ideas of him. He has fought on the whole a very fair fight so far— quite as fair as most- nations figfet, any way so far as evidence at present goes, but even if he has not indulged in the bloodthirsty atrocities with which his name is generally coupled, you would imagine that he would hie just the man for using the bayonet. On tho contrary, the (experience of this force so far is that the Turk finds the bayonet an awkward weapon to use. He mostly j lies down on the edge of the trench and-fires either into that or over it. A few riervous digs with tho point of it was all the bayonet attack that some of these great, grim, dark men scorned to make. Tho men who' had drawn aside from parts of tho sap in whicli the Turks had jumped still held the Turks from tho ends of the sap, and they now bombed these Turks from both sides, until they were all killed, and then reoccupied the sap. In the meantime a second made from the Turkish trench. Tfleso rushes were bravely made, but the Turks scarcely seemed to know where to go. They never even looked like succeeding. At last some of them tried to get round between the edgo of the trenches and the cliff, or sheer hillside, which faces the sea. Others tried to creep round the inland edgo of this side of our triangle just where the gully above mentioned runs down into the apex of our line. Those who tried to get round Dy the cliff mot some very perfoct trenches, and were shot down thickly. But some of them managed to get either over or round those, and came suddenly—two or three of them —upon a set of kitchens or some such offices by the rear of our advanced line. There was a sentry stationed over the place with two mates in a shallow trench. The two matss were sleeping at tho time. The sentry tried to bayonet the leading Turk, and missed him. He then grapplad him and the first thing that tho two sleeping men knew of tho attack was when tho sentry and the struggling Turk fell in on top of them. This Turk was cither killed or made prisoner, and his companions ran at once. The Turks also ran on top of a ma-chine-gun position ucfore they were seen. The leading Turk managed to bayonet one of the gun's crew through the arm, and was trying to bayonet the sergeant of the detachment, when the latter, who could not get his gun into position in time, snatched up a rifls, and 6lfot the Turk on the parapet. The attack between the trench and the cliff utterly failed. This part of the fight belonged almost exclusively to the Ist Light Horse Brigade. About the time when this attack was preparing, the destroyer, which at night always keeps her light turned on this flank, switched it on to the high slopes of the main ridge, from which tha Turkish attacks seemed to have come. The circle of white light showed up a line of men moving down from one trench across the open to the trench below it. Somo of our machinetrnns got on to them, and fortv of th-em are said to have been counted there this morning.