THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 23 February 1916, Page 7

THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI

- AX OFFICER'S LETTER. A letter has been received in Sydney from Brigadier-General Ryrie, in which he describes the evacuaton of Suvla and Anzac, and his own part iii the operations. % "I saw one silly cablegram," says the writer, "which said we were unmolested by the Turks. But the only reason that any number of us up to 10 or 15,000 were not' killed, wounded, or captured, was the extraordinary steps we took to trick them. I knew a week before that we were going, and that I and the brigade ay ere to be left to the last as rearguard, and it was rather an anxious week. I made sure their spies would get hold of the information, and that, of course, the Turks would attack them when half tho troops had gone. "We had to get away on Saturday and Sunday nights, about 20,000 each night, and it looked an impossiblity to do it without their knowing, but we did. We used every device imaginable to make them think we were preparing to attack them instead of going away. „ "The old Turk must have been very angry when he found how he had been tricked, and some generals and people would get the sack for letting us get away so simply. We hadn't a man killed, and I think everyone was brought off. One man arrived just in time for the last boat, exhausted and ha'tless, and said he had been posted as listener in a tunnel, and after .waiting there seven hours he thought there must be' something wrong, and on coming out found himself alone. He was probably the only man holding the line against the whole Turkish army. He had a. good mile and a half to run. We had a game of cricket, just to let them see that we were quite unconcerned, and when shells whistled by we pretended to field them. "The men were wonderfully cheerful, and seemed to-take,the whole thing as a huge joke; they left all sorts° of messages for the Turks—generally be- ! ginnng 'Mv dear Abdul,' and 'My dear ; Jacko.' It is, I think, the most extraordinary performance in the history of the world, to think that two huge armies were only 20, 30, 40, and 50 yards apart i-.i n lot of places, and that one could slip away without the other knowing."