WITH THE TROOPS

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 89, 13 October 1915, Page 11

WITH THE TROOPS

FIGHT FOR THE DARDANELLES NEW MOVEMENTS ON THE PENINSULA

ANOTHER LANDING. NEW ZEAILANDERS IN A NftrHT ATTACK. (From Malcolm Ross, Official War-Cor-respondent with the-N.Z. Force*.) No. 3 Outpost, 7th August. ' For some weeks now the armies at Cape Helles have sat facing each other in the trenches. Since the big battle on the Achi Ba-ba front at the end of June — when, at considerable cost, the Allies gained a thousand yards — and the subsequent advance of 400 yards, no movement of any importance has taken place. With the New Zealand and Australian forces facing the Turk on the rugged cliffs and ridges of Sari Bair, the same conditions have applied. The Australians, on the right., have sallied forth, and, in unimportant skirmishes, have taken a trench or two; but there have been no encounters except of minor importance. The threatened Turkish attack came to nothing. Not even Eamazan could induce the Turk to leave his trenches. For once religious fervour had to take a back seat to German tactics. Yet all the time strategy and organisation were marching stealthily but steadily toward a grand climacteric on the Peninsula of Gallipoli. NEW PEEPARATIONS. By the end of July preparations were well in hand, and things were happening up and down the long line of communications extending on the one hand from England, and on the other from New Zealand and Australia. Strangelooking craft like nothing ever seen before upon the face of the waters entered the harbours of islands in the Aegean — that once were Turkish. These were the new monitors. Cruisers bristling with guns stood off shore and bombarded the Turkish positions, not caring, apparently, about enemy submarines. Battleships came more warily into action, and sent their big shells hurtling into Asia, while our own submarines rose gleaming like great porpoises beside the very quays of Constantinople. Troopships and supply-ships came and went. The water that we drank and with which we shaved was fetched from London and Liverpool. We washed in sea water. The Ark Royal, with her sea-planes and the balloon-ships went bravely about their master's business, and the Gulf of Saros was dotted with destroyers and trawlers, and drifters, and steam pinnaces. Day in and day out they braved the enemy's 'shot and shell. And high above all these — often with the white fleecy puffs of bursting shrapnel dotting their winding courses — flew the graceful aeroplanes with their daring pilots and observers, mapping out the Turkish positions and dropping bombs. It was interesting to watch sevon of them flying i down the Dardanelles in the late even- 1 ing, past Helles, and on to the island j home. With such aids and adventures did we once more adjust our far-flung battle line. A NEW FORCE. In the midst of it all one day divisions of the King's new armies began to arrive — surfeited with a year's training ; eager for action. They looked a likely lot — not possessing the Herculean strength of the Australians and the New Zealanders, but sturdy and fit. None doubted that they would give a good account of themselves. With them came Gurkhas and Sikhs. The troops poured into Anzac Cove under the cover of darkness and deployed to right and left. On the evening before the great adventure there were some nervous bursts of rifle fire, as if the Turks had a premonition of coming danger. The destroyers guarding our flanks as usual directed their waving searchlights athwart the Peninsula and sent in an occasional shell. Farther south the flash of guns from the sea, could be seen opposite the Krithian heights. A gentle south wind blew and lightning played from an angry cloud above Samothrace. Waking at 3 a.m. one noticed a waning crescent moon above the heights of Anzac ; the south wind had died down and the lightning had shifted from Samothrace to Imbros. With dawn came pinnaces and drifters and trawlers, bursts of rifle fire, and the occasional boom of a gun. The enemy had seen some Indian troops landing in the early dawn, and they commenced to shell the little pier. Gurkhas and Sikhs came in two barges, waited for the word to disembark, and then walked calmly off the wharf with rifles, haversacks, and all their other belongings, one man trotting like a Chinaman with his bundles slung at either end of a pole balanced across his shoulder. A few Turkish shells fired from the south, fell short. Another gun from the north also failed to reach the mark. Their shells fell harmlessly into the sea, lashing the water into foam. Just above us from our back trenches on the crest of the steep yellow cliff came the crackle of intermittent rifle fire, and the sharper pointed Turkish bullets in reply went with a melancholy whistling .wail overhead. A gun in the north with a high explosive shell began to get a better range on the landing, but still without effect. On the right another gun .was just missing a trawler. The vessel moved away slowly. One shell almost got her on the water-line. Finally, one hit her on th© deck for'ard, and a little cloud of black smoke arose. Slowly the trawler turned her nose to sea and steamed away out of range. She was not seriously damaged. As th© forenoon wore on a howitzer opened on us from the centre of the Turkish position, one shell bursting on the Indian cemetery in front of my dugout and shaking the earth down on my writing pad. Some Indians digging a grave escaped miraculously. One of them picked up a chunk of the burst casing from an adjacent mound, showed it to a companion, and went on digging the grave ! Another of these howitzer shells burst with a loud noise and much dust and smoke amongst some men lower down lhe slope. One expected to see arms and legs flying and dead and wounded carried away. Strange to say, not a man was hit, and one New Zealander emerged from the cloud of smoke and earth and laughingly called, out to his startled comrades, " Bring me a field dressing to bind up me bloomin' nerves ! " All this noise, however, was but the prelude to the grand Wagnerian tumult of sound that later on was to strike terror into the heart of the Turk. BATTERING THE A CHI-BAB A TRENCHES. Looking towards Achi Baba early in the afternoon one saw that the Turkish trenches were getting a great battering. The wind was in the wrong direction, and we could not hear the bombardment, but we could see the great bursts from the exploded shells riaing high above the summit of Achi Baba itself. The whol^ of the available artillery seemed to be in quick action. A lengthy curtain of yellowish grey smoke rose from over the Turkish position, and drifted across tht> Dardanelles. Against this dull background the bursts of shrapnel with a j

bluish tinge in their -whiter puffs were clearly seen. At intervals one of the huge shells from the new monitors would burst into a vast geyser-like column of blacker smoke and earth. This, together with the sluapnei, would be blown with the wind and gradually dis sipated .into the common curtain. "Lord help the poor Turk !" was a frequent expression among the watchers of this bombardment. Some of the Turkish shells were bursting near the edge of the cliff above the Lancashire landing, but the enemy's guns were far fewer than ours, and his. supply of ammunition also, ap parently, left much to be desired. The 'line of ships at Helles was silhouetted in the clear air against the horizon, and above the line soared the big balloon, spotting for the guns of the 'navy. NEW BATTLE BEGINS. It was the afternoon of Friday, 6th. August, and we had ascertained that a big attack was contemplated on the northern Turkish position. There were also rumours of another landing on a large scale just to the north of Our farthest position on the extreme left — No. 3 outpost held by the Otago Mounted Rifles — who had been for some time in the trenches — and a number of the Maori Contingent. As the New Zealanders were on the left wing and that corner of the field promised to be specially interesting, 1 left Anzac in company with a general and one of his staff and walked through the long communication trench to the outpost. Punctually at 5 p.m. a howitzer fired the first shot in the general bombardment that was to precede the attack. Battery after battery came into action, and the Turkish guns replied. The shel^ from the French seven-ty-fives in possession of the Turks, shrieked viciously over our heads at high velocity on their way to Anzac, and some of the intervening positions. The bombardment continued furiously for half an hour, and then the crackle of riflefire on the right came as an intimation that the Australian attack had begun. The banging of the guns, the rattle of rifle fire, and the intermittent popping of the machine-guns on both sides now made a, great din. At the outpost the Otago colonel was preparing to lead his men into battle as soon as the shades of night fell. He was, as ever, cheery and brave. In the I dusk outside his dugout we sat and chatted of the prospects of the night attack. The men, he said, were eager and in high spirits, though they knew t there was stiff work ahead. We listened [ to two of them soberly discussing, wifli t a strong Scottish accent, the question of whether on the eve of a battle a man should shake hands with his chum or not. With the old Covenanter spirit, they decided that there should be no such good-byes. With these words the gallant colonel buckled on his armour [ and went off with his regiment and a platoon of the Maoris into the darkness. [ He succeeded in accomplishing the task that had been set him that night, and [ more. Sad" to tell, he was shot through ! the head and spine after a dashing charge at the head of 150 of his men into a Turkish trench. i ' — - i DASHING WORK BY NEW ZEALANDERS THE MAORIS IN ACTION. No. 3 OUTPOST, Bth August. All night long the bombardment and the crackle of the Turkish fire continued. The staff worked throughout the night, and scarcely anyone got to sleep. At 4 a.m. the guns of the navy were firing rapidly on the Turkish positions. I had been asleep for two hours, and woke to find a figure, apparently dead, in front of my bivouac. Presently he moved, sat up, and rubbed his eyes, and 1 saw that he was wounded. "My word ! that's quick firing," he said ; "they are rocking it in, aren't they?" As dawn came I saw that it was his arm that was injured. He was in some pain, and very grimy, with blood on his bare knees, between the putties and the shorts ; but he was cheerful and talkative. He had been out on the left with three squadrons of the Canterbury Mounted Eifles. They marched along the flat for 500 yards and then inland for another 300 yards, when the Turks opened fire. The Canterbury men drove off the enemy at this point, but on reaching a scrubby knoll about 150 yards further on a Turkish machine-gun opened fire on their right flank. The New Zealanders charged, and took the gun, though the Turks met them with the bayonet. Finally the Canterbury "Mounteds" got into the Turkish trenches at the point of the bayonet. It was here that my newly-found acquaintance was wounded. "That," he said, "was where I finished. I got a Turk in the throat with the first thrust, just as he got me in the arm." This' man also was loud in his praise of the Maoris, who, after the work of bayoneting in the Turkish trenches was finished, went plunging on through the scrubby slopes, searching the enemy bivouacs for further victims. Their losses in comparison to their numbers were considerable. OUTWITTING THE TURK. To put the Turks off on a wrong tack, there had been for some time previously indications of another landing at Gaba Tepe, just south of the Australian position, and the Turks, utterly misled., had been furiously digging and strengthening this position. Secretly and silently large numbers of new troops had been landed and placed in special places and terraces where they could not be observed from the air. They were packed in like sardines. While the fight at Lonesome Pine was going on these troops were moved out in the darkness to our left flank. There were thousands of them, and the operation was a difficult one, because they had to go along a single road on the beach. This road had been made under cover of the darkness, and was cunningly constructed so that it could not be reeognisecl a.s a. read by the hostile aerOplanes. THE PLAN OF ACTION. A comprehensive plan of action had apparently been carefully thought out in connection with the operations on the left flank. The first thing to be done was to send a covering force from Nos. 2 and 3 outposts, our extreme left, to take certain hills that would have prevented the main body of the attacking force from getting out. These positions are what are known to us as the old No. 3 Post, Table Top, Little Table Top, and Bauchop's Hill. This attack, which was to be a night one, with the bayonet only, was assigned to the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade and the Maoris. Another covering force was sent out to take Damak Selik Bair, on the extreme left, just over the Aghyl Dere, now a dry watercourse. The troops commenced to form up for this attack about 7.30 p.m. Others began to pour out of the end of our long communication trench, and with the assistance of guides to march slowly and silently to the various points of attack assigned them. On the left the Turks, as at other points, were at close quarters ?nd strongly entrenched on a series of rugged scrub-covered hills intersected with deep water-worn ravines extending from a little flat near the centre of Ocean Beach to the long curving ridsre of Chunuk Bair about 850 feet high and 2200 yards inland. The whole country is most difficult and puzzling from the military point of view to anyone who has not been over it and studied it thoroughly.

MAORI WARRIORS IN ACTION. Under cover of the darkness the Otago and Canterbury Mounted Infantry went out to attack Bauchop's Hill. This was likely to prove a hard nut to crack. The position once gained would protect «the advance of the Indian Brigade led by the Ghurkas on the left, while on the other side it would protect the left flank of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade. The objective in the meantime of the Otago men was a scrub-covered spur below the higher Tidge of Chunuk Bair, named Rhododendron Suur, the Ghurkhas eventually would have to fight up the steep brushwood slopes — ideal fighting country for them. "The Auckland Regiment left from No. 2 outpost a little to the- south of No. 1, and marched up a valley past the Fisherman's Hut Ridge. They then turned sharp to the left in front of the old No. 3 post, which we once held for two or three days. It ' had been occupied for some time past by a body of Turks, who were well entrenched, and the attack had to be made I up a precipitous face. The Wellington j Regiment had to gain a footing on | Destroyer Hill, and then move up an almost precipitous cliff on to a littl© bit of level land known as "Table Top." and which 'is attached to Rhododendron Spur. The Maoris were distributed amongst the foree — one platoon with the Otago men attacking Bauchop's Hill, one platoon with the New Zealand Infantry attacking Table Top, the rest of the contingent being held in reserve. The men were told not fo load their magazines, for this was to be a night attack, and the bayonet only had to be used. Both officers and men had broad bands of white calico sewn on their coat sleeves, and a big square patch of th© same material sewn on the- backs of their coats — a necessary precaution in an attack on a dark night, so that in the general melee in the scrub and the trenches friend should not be bayonetting friend, but only the enemy. The regiment going out on the left soon met with rifle fire from Turks concealed in the scrub, and the Maoris soon dashed on to the front. One or two of the other parties had a little difficulty in following the exact line of route. Apart from these incidents the plans laid down worked .out well, and the New Zealanders did all tnat was asked of them. Punctually at 9 p.m. a destroyer, standing close in, flashed a strong searchlight on the land and began to fire on the Turkish trenches for ten minutes. Her guns were silent for another ten minutes. Then there was another ten minutes' bombardment. The firing was so close that the pungent smell of the propelling powder was wafted on shore by the light sea breeze. Our men charged into the Turkish trenches with, great elan, bayoneting right and left. Trench, after trench was cleared, and many of the Turks broke and ran. Of these a number were bayoneted, and when daylight came others were either shot or taken prisoner. Few escaped. One could only follow the fight from the flash and rattle of the Turkish rifles, the cheering of our men, and the wild shouts of the Maoris. Once their blood wa-s up the Maoris fought magnificently. Charging into the Turkish trenches they were more than a match for even the hefty Turk, who, for the first time in history, listened to the wild -war cries 6f the Ngapuhi and other famous tribes reeounding among the hills and dales of Sai'i Bair. By dawn the positions sought for had been won, and at a moderate sacrifice, considering the difficulty of the operation. But there was still sterner work ahead. THE FORCE ON THE LEFT WING. The force which the New Zealand General had at his disposal for the operations on the left wing was a strong one, and one that was largely representative of the Empire. While the initial attack was going on, the assaulting columns of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade moved—partly along the communication trench and partly along the new beach road — and entered three ravines. The Wellington Regiment on the right went up the Sazli Beit Dere, and the remainder of this force moved up the Charlik Dere, the objective of this column being Rhododendron Ridge, a predominant feature of the Sari Bair Ranges. The left assaulting column moved further to the north and entered the Argyhl Dere. The advance of the assaulting columns commenced at 10 p.m. on Friday, and the heads of the columns soon met with opposition, which necessitated picketing the heights. It meant putting men on every little spur they reached. As already explained, the ground over which these operations had to be conducted was bristling with difficulties and complicated contours. During the whole of the night fighting was continuous. Our troops were forbidden to fire. The bayonet only was iised. This plan had the' great advantage that there was no danger of our own troops firing into one another. It had also this advantage: that the Turkish fire soon disclosed the positions of the enemy. Frequent cheers and the warlike cries of the Maoris resounded through the glens. Many Turks were killed and a large number of prisoners were taken. Our casualties also were large, but up to the present there has been no opportunity of making any reliable estimate. Before this letter reaches New Zealand the full tale will be told. It' says a great deal for the care taken and the secrecy observed that both the concentration and the attack came as a great surprise to the enemy. Many Turks were found asleep in their dug-outs, and in many cases they were undressed. Prisoners, of whom many were taken, afterwards admitted that they had no previous warning of our attack. THE DAYLIGHT WORK. Dawn was rapidly breaking and the long column was still stretched out in comparatively open countiy. Had it been caught in this position when daylight came it' must inevitably have suffered much, both from rifle, machine gun, and shell fire. The columns, however, were hurriedly ensconced in the numerous valleys and hollows that abound, and when the ( light grew strong enough for the guns tb shoot there was no target at which they could fire. Meantime, however, there was a wonderful bombardment of the Turkish position in front of our old position at Walker's Ridge, Russell's Top, and the Nek. Gun after gun began to speak till aJmost every gun on sea and shore was in action. The noise of the guns and of the bursting shells, with the continuous hard staccato of rifle-fire, and the intermittent popping of the machineguns, filled the hills and dales with a war chorus polyphonous and grand. Some of the Turkish parapets -were blown away in clouds of dust, and in places the trenches themselves were badly shattered. As dawn broke we could also see that the new landing to the north of our position had been secretly and successfully accomplished. Later in the morning we could see the Turkish shells bursting near the ships and the troops on shore. The landing at such a spot was as unexpected as it was disconcerting to the enemy. The result of this important operation is net yet known here.