A VARIETY IN SHELLS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 4 September 1915, Page 5

A VARIETY IN SHELLS.

OUR OWN ARTILLERY

(From Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with the N.Z. Forces.)

ANZAC, July 1, 1915. For some few days there has been persistent shelling of the Anzac position by a Variety of enemy guns, and recently a 4-inch gun has opened on us from a, new, position in the south. It fires from south of Gaba Tepe on a range of yards. The shells come very fast,, gome with -a shrapnel charge and others bursting the shell into fragments with a. high explosive. Then there is the gun that shells us from the direction of the village of Anafarta, on our left flank. Here there are two or ttree field guns firing at a range of 5600 yards. They are 15-pounders, and' their shells when coming give you plenty of time for warning, so that you generally have time to duck for cover. You hear the report of the firing, then in two or three seconds the whistling noise that the shell makes in coming through the air, and, in another seconu or two, the explosion of the bursting shell. This gun has been doing far more damage than any of the* other guns, because ii> cannot- be located in the very difficult terrain in which it operates, and it is impossible to silence it. There. are, away, beyond our left flank, a lot ofMow' ridges^ behind any of which, it jnight be hidden, and searching for, it at present would be simply a waste of ammunition. Sometimes this gun^ moves round more to the, north. From the south in the early days of the occupation of Anzac they used to get one or two big shells from the Asiatic bide—shells of about b inches—and an il-inch shell also fell in the ba.^ quite close in. None of -these heavy gentlemen havej however, been making their appearance for some weeks past. They probably came from the guns of the Goeben .' The Turks, •'opurred on by Germans, however, are ye energetic in shifting their guns, imd display a good deal of ingenuity in their methods. The result is that we generally get shelled two or three times a day, and often lose a few men. We however, must maintain our position. The Turks have a wide field in which to operate, and never stand beini; shelled iii return. Under such circumstances, they lie low or clear out, and. for fear of discovery, they never fire at night. One of our positions is shelled by a little mountain gun from a point blank range of from 600 to 1000 yards. We reply by howitzer fire, one round of v;Hich usually shuts the little fellow up. There are similar guns to. those on Johnston's Jolly and Lonely Pine to the south, quite close to our fire trenches. „ OUR OWN ARTILLERY. A walk round our position is a revelation ofthe wonderful ingenuity of our Engineers and the enormous amount of work done by our men in tfench-dig-gingi In places there is a perfect maze of trenches and communication trenches. Even the "old inhabitants" —men who have been in residence at Anzac for nine weeksi—are apt to lose their way in them when seeking a particular gun. One day I had a look round our gun positions. Here again one could not fail to note the energy and the ingenuity displayed. The howitzers and field guns had been dragged to points that seemed, almost inaccessible. One rannot, of course, go into entails about the position of our guns. We, climbed.a short slope, dived down into a valley past lines of muies in charge of Indians, and came to a spot from which- we could see the Turkish lines, and were in danger of being hit by an enemy bullet. Then we climbed by a winding zig-zagging patii to the siiminit of a »:teep hill upon which was a perfect maze of trenches where Australians and New Zealaaiders were keeping their twenty-fours' vigil until another lot of men should let them off for sleep. Some men were asleep in tiny covers scooped out of the trench-sides; others were cooking a meal, brewing their tea or frying a bit of bacon over a iittle brushwood fire. Two things impressed the -stranger—the numberless flies and the smell of humanity that pervaded this over-populous warren, but everybody seemed happy and ready for any emergency. It was the heat of the day, and there was little doing. The Turk likes his siesta, and, except for the outlooks, he was probably asleep all along the line. A few bullets hit the parapet or • ame whistling overhead. Our men scarcely troubled to reply.

'By devious vays we walked in the narrow trenches to the observation post of a battery that was going to -fire. Through the narrow, well-protected and well-6creened peep-hole we could just see beyond our own lines and the Turkish trenches- a scrub shelter, about which, earlier in the day, some Turks had been 6een. This had been christened by th© Australians "The Mi-mi." The battery opened fire, the first shot going high, and a little to the right. Corrections were duly made by the man in the observation post, and presently a well-directed shot planted right into the Mi-mi, and it went up in a cloud of dust. It is all very wonderful this indirect fire, because the man who is doing the actual firing sees nothing of what he is firing at. While we were watching «>ne of our howitzers, firing a 100-pound shell, also opened fire. We could see its shell from start to,finish of the great arc it described. It grounded near the Mi-mi and sent a cloud of earth and smoke into the air. The Turkish guns replied with shrapnel and bursting shell. This shooting over, j we went by tortuous ways to another post. Here we were under fire, and had to be careful. The Turkish trenches were but 200 yards away, and a head shown above tho parapet was almost sure to be hit. Even as we observed the bullets were hitting the sandbags a couple of feet away from our heads. From some of these vantage points the views are so wonderfully beautiful that one could not help gazing in admiration in momentary forgetfulness of the bullets that were whistling past or hitting th c protecting sand-bags. -