QUIET NIGHTS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2564, 11 September 1915, Page 13

QUIET NIGHTS

TURKS SHORT OF AMMUNITION. , . In a very interesting letter to his parents (Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Raivson, of Wellington), Dr. H. J. .Rawson, -who is in the' Asturias, 'which is engaged in carrying -wounded from th'e Dardanelles to Egypt and England, says"Just before we got to Southampton I came aoross a sergeant in the New Zealand Forces named Clark, of Wellington, who had been in Messrs. J. E. Nathan and Company's office for twenty years. He said tho Australians mistook him for a Turk and turned a machine-gun on him, ■wounding one leg, but tho other injury necessitating amputation of the thigh was done by a Turk; He said I was the first Wellingtonian he had met, and seemed very pleased to como across one from the same town. Al( the Tommies speak very, well of- the Turks; say they 'play the game, and don't do dirty tricks.' _ Certainly when we were lying off Gallipoli it would have been very easy for them to have fired on us, but they never aim deliberately for a hospital. _ Batteries are sometimes near them, in which case they may be hit by shots aimed for the battery, which occurs fairly often. Most officers think they ought to get Achi Baba soon, but realise they have a tremendous task before them. Turks seem getting short of ammunition, as they seldom reply to the warships' fire, and never do any big-gun firing at niglitj so that the nights are almost quiet, with the exception of some rifle firing. I heard from an Army Medical Corps orderly who came back with us from Alexandria .that Dr. Holmes was witli the Australians, in charge of a field hospital at Gaba Tepe, and that the Turks had been shelling tho place very heavily." •