GALLIPOLI

Hokitika Guardian, 18 June 1934, Page 3

GALLIPOLI

HEROES’ PILGRIMAGE TO GRAVES

r*:,; •>. . REUNITE!) AFTER 19 YEARS |

Men who had not seen each other since an April day nineteen years ago, when they flung themselves down-.side by side on the bullet-raked slopes above Suvla Bay, lately gripped hands on the ihverpool quayside.

The men had found one another among the 700, pilgrims—men, women, and Duchess of Richmond for Gallipoli. Among them w'eie men irresistibly drawn back to look once again on the barren land they knew as a hell of sweltering heat, disease and death. Young men travelling to the ground their fathers made glorious. Women to whom the long pilgrimage meant but to kneel for a few moments beside a wooden crass, says Mr Gordon Webb in the Daily Chronicle.

Walter Low had arranged to lay an official wreath for the British Legion among the rows of crosses which are tended by the Turks. His.private mission was to search among those same rows for the name of his comrade of the R.N.A.S. who never came back. “We joined up together,” he said. “We were drafted to France together and we sailed for Gallipoli on the same boat. Then we went over in the sam« attack.”

For two days and nights the body of Lieutenant Holt, of the Manchester Regiment, lay where he had been killed in No Man’s Land until after they had many times risked their own lives, his comrades succeeded in givihg him a rough grave. “It is to them that I owe the fact that I am now able to visit the place where lie lies,” said Mrs Holt.

Tense moments were vividly recalled to Mr W. F. Bridgstock. “I wets in part of the line held by the 42nd Division, where we were within 30 yards of the Turks.” he said. “Our orders were to attack if the moon was clouded over, and we knew that our company would be wiped out as others liad been. We waited in deathly silence for an order which never came. “The tragedy for me came after that. My host friend was blown to pieces by a Turkish bomb as lie sat reading a letter from home. I thing I can find his grave.” As the ship’s siren sounded the laist

warning a man who had journeyed from Plymouth hurried down the gangway. Mr Jack Humphreys had been searcliing for a glimpse of a face he knew. He stood sadly watching the liner slowly slide away.

Many of those who waved good-bye from the quay had tears trickling down their cheeks. Perhaps it was because the hand on the deck above was playing “Tipperary.”