A ROUND OF THE TRENCHES

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 10 January 1916, Page 5

A ROUND OF THE TRENCHES

EFFECTIVE ' SHOOTING BY OUR SHIPS.^

(From Malcolm Ross, Official War Cor- , respondent with the N.Z. Forces.)

GALLIPOLI PEN., Nov 7 NO. I. [The following and two succeeding articies were written after a round of the trenches m the company of Colonel Heaton Rhodes, M.P., who is at present visiting the Peninsula and the New Zealand troops as a Commissioner on behalf of the New Zealand Government Colonel Rhodes was, during most of his expeditions, accompanied by the General in Command of the New Zealand and Australian Division of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.] J

The summer having burnt itself out after months of sweltering heat, autumn —the autumn of the Dardanelles—has with unpleasant suddenness begun to play its tricks upon us. One week there is a bitter cold wind sweeping down trom the icy' Caucasus or the Russian teteppes, sometimes with rain. Then there is a brief calm, the grey sky begms to lighten in the south, and a warmer wind, that grows to a gale, blows from that quarter. It is the taill end of some sirocco, and before it is finished it lashes the Gulf of Saros into foam, and spitefully buffets our shipping. The grey, herring-gutted tocpedoboat m which we cross the Gulf dips I and .rolls, with her decks awash till \ we become unpleasantly wet. THE GUNS AT WORK. We keep our eyes alternately on the weather rail and the nearing land But even the longing for land diminishes in inverse ratio to its proximity, for there is a strafe" on, and we- can see high explosive and Turkish shrapnel bursting over Anzac One of our planes is up tSu^abov^ ,vs> and > as she swerves slightly and begins to fly on a line that will take her exactly overhead, a man quietly curses the pilot, for her track »« bemg punctuated with nufiV. that Hoav away prettily in the upper air but f «-hich may drop, a leaden ■, hail 'or a ! chunk of iron upon-us. j I On a trawler coming up from the' south are the General and' Colonel -tteaton Rhodes, the New Zealand Commissioner, who have-been visiting our tired troops and sturdy reinforcements etiU resting on the Island of Imbros Juey are just m time to see a fine bit, of shooting by the warships and schkv o. .Gui own batteries. The observers njwo spotted a Turkish division enca iitd- j .ejl •■'amongst- the olive trees 'between bal.a Tepe the Sedd-ul-Bahr plateau, and the guns are now pounding it for. all they are worth. A bit of comparatively flat land is being "searched, and the high explosive is bursting here and there over a considerable area and sending great clouds of smoke and dust'into the air. An aeroplane hovers awhile above the position, spotting, flies southward as some' Turkish shrapnel" bursts near her, then turns gracefully back and has another look. Of all the hundreds of shots one has seen fired at our aircraft, not one has been effective though planes and observers and nilots have been hit. The other day. wKen a plane was high up above the' Turkish trenches, it suddenly developed engine trouble, but the pilot volplaned to earth in, our own lines, and neither he nor the observer was injured., The planes were bent with the shock of landing but not badly damaged. The machine was shipped on a trawler next day and carried ignojniniously as cargo across to Imbros, where we saw her hauled ud on the beach, with a busy little group of mechanics pulling her to pieces for conveyance to-the repairing base. ON A TORPEDO-BOAT. . - Arrived at Anzac, our little torpedoboat circle© off shore while we wait for nuV\ C-k^ ollt to take us off. There are J/urkish shells dropping about us in the sea, so she keeps1 on the move, puzzling the Turkish gunners-, till we tranship and land, Avhile she continues her journey to Suvla. The picket-boat on which the General and the New Zealand Envoy land later has haft a shell through her funnel that morning. Trawlers, torI pedo-boats, and picket-boats have all | these months been doing splendid work, and the German and the Turkish gun- | ners, try they ever so well, cannot stop j their and their comings. They are the nerves that keep our armies on the, Peninsula in touch / with the outer world, and if one by any chance is torn asunder it is quickly pieced together again by the surgeon of the seas—the British Navy. •

AN EVENING "HATE."

Late in the afternoon the "strafe" ends automatically, as if by mutual consent. But we on our side are' not satisfied, and have already decided upon an evening "hate." We climb a little hill into an observation post, and watch the shooting on the Turkish trenches on Chunuk Bair, which are within full view and easy distance. We sit there in the gathering dusk talking—the New Zealand Envoy, a New Zealand artillery officer (now a general), a New Zealand colonel (wounded and returned to the front), and the writer. The three officers were in the South African War, and they now meet in an artillery observation post on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the greatest war of all the ages. The talk is all about war: it is grave and gay.; for even in the heat of battle there have been amusing, incidents, and the day when he fail* to see the humorous as well as the tragic side of it will be a bad day for the British soldier. "There's'.Dirty Dick coming in fo^ his evening stunt," says the Colone' breaking in upon a conversation, and looking seaward we note a dull grey destroyer, stealing panther-like close inshore. For a second or two he flashes a brilliant electric eye in the semi-dark-ness—probably just a practice wink, or a signal that he is going to shoot— steams round in a graceful curve until he. is side on, slows down, stops dead, and then Bang! bang! a sharp roport and a quiet echo, a shell tearing overhead through the air, a burst of flame and sparks, with a dull cloud of tarth. and smoke on a Chunuk ISair trench,, and^the dull report of the bursting shell coming back across the hills and dsles. This is repeated again and again, until we get tired of watching and descend to our dug-outs. We go in to dinner, have quite a merry meal, a talk, and a smoke, and then to bed. A few "strays" come singing close overhead, and throughout the night, if you are not a sound sleeper, you will hear the intermittent crackle of rifle fire, and the loud dull explosion of bombs, intimating that they are still awake in the trenches on the heights above.