AT SUVLA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 17029, 2 December 1915, Page 8

AT SUVLA.

OFF-SHOOT OF AUSTRALIAN' NAVY. THE MAKERS OF A HARBOUR. (From CAPTAIN BEAN, Official Correspondent with Australian Forces.) (Copyright.) (Rights Specially Secured' hy " Lyttelton Times.") DARDANELLES, October 11. • I came across them at Suvla quite apart from any other portion of the Australian forces. They are only about four miles as the crow flies from the mountain side at which the Third Brigade made its famous landing. Twenty or thirty thousand of their countrymen moro or less have been living within sight of them for two months. And yet they are part of a world so separate that I do not think one Australian or New Zealander in one thousand knows that they arc there, and they know practically nothing whatever of what happens at Anzac. You can walk any day in a couple of hours from any part of Anzac to Suvla; but in a campaign like this you know nothing of what is Happening to the troops haif a mile on eitner sid'e of you unltss it is your business to go there and inquire. It was on Suvla beach that one found them, a tiny off snoot from the Australian Navy. As the Mother Country required engineers and the military bridging trains possessed by Australia had already been used up, the Australian Navy provided a bridging train and sent it off in June with its pontoon all .built at Cockatoo dock, its waggons and its 300 men, en route for the British dockyard at Chatham. There it was to finish its training. At Port Said on Sunday, July 18, the ship was stopped and orders wore given for her to sail in a different direction and join quite a different enterprise. And at seven o'clock on the night of August 6 men of the train found' themselves looking over their bulwarks just as night was falling watching the first of a line of great transports wind out between the mountain side of an island harbour and turn their heads stra'ght for a distant coast line which was fading into night. THEIR LANDING. Tho transport into which tbey had hauled their belongings had for the second time been ta-cked and moved off itsoii about midnight. By daybreak they were moving into Suvla Bay. Away to the north side and inland of them ran great scrubby ridges all brown and yellow after the long dry summer until they faded into the purple circle of the more d'istant hills. To the south of them all isolate on the southern horn of the bay was a solitary bare ground ridge. From all around them, from a mile or two north right to the distant south where the Anzac troops were breaking out into the hills, came the noises of a big battle. An aeroplane flew high overhead with black crosses painted on the underside of her white planes. . A bomb whirred down and* exploded astern of the ship. Another followed it on her beam. Presently shrapnel from batteries inland Anafarta way began to burst their shrfcpnel over the ship, and she had to move to avoid them. All day long four great grey warships were moving backwards and forward's into position between transports and the shore drawing the fire of the Turkish batteries upon themselves and away from the transports. For the Australian Navy bridging train had been sent into quite a separate enterprise from that of the rest of tho Australian troops. They were part of the British force which landed at Suvla Bay on tho night of August 6. That force was a distinct one.—there were no Australians or New Zealanders in it except tho bridging train and a certain number "of picked shots _ who were afterwards lent to train snipers. The naval bridging train came under the orders of the officer commanding the Engineers of the army corps which landed at Suvla; the Royal Engineers who were with the corps went straight inland to work on roads and defences, and the Australian bridging train became responsible for all the work on the beach. They became, and''ever since have practically been, an additional company of the army corps which first made the Suvla landing.

THE I/AND MINES ON THE BEACH. As the Australians had from first to last been working on the beach, it fell to their lot to be the spectators of one of the strangest ep ; sodes which have occurred during the Gallipoli campaign. The landing of August 6 was not the first landing at Suvla-.. The southern point juts right out into the se& almost at the back of A r.ac, and from the first hour of our landing it was obvious to everyone that the Turks must establish an observation station there even if they could not place guns there. Tbev would certainly have put guns there if the low neck behind the point had not been so utterly exposed to the fire of the smallest warship that the guns would inevitably have been destroyed or captured. On the third day of the campaign activity was observed on the point. Some sort of work was going on there. Two battleships at once sailed up and stood close in, one to the north of the cape and the other to the south of it. and fairly tore the inside out of the isolated little clump of hills. A lauding party of New Zealanders dashed in a couple of days afterwards in destroyers and captured fifteen Turks who formed the observing party. The observing station nseli seems to have been utterly wreoked by the battleships’ fire. That object lesson seems to have shown tho Turks that it was useless to defend the point of Suvla Bay with any considerable force. They kept a small garrison tucked away in trenches in the hill clumps. But for the rest the landing place was unprotected by any force of infantry, except they must have spent some of their nights upon the northern shore of tho bay, whenever they could evade the searchlights of the ships, industriously sowing land mines.

The first of these mines which the Australians saw explode went off at about eleven o’clock on a beach on the northern side of tho harbour. The beaches where the British first lauded at Suvla were outside of the bay altogether, on the outer shore of'the southern horu of the bay—a continuation of tho long north beach of Auzac. It was only when they shifted the landing operations during the morning to the beaches inside the bay and on tho northern lining of the bay in particular that they suddenly found themselves in an area sown with mines.

These mines were bidden underneath the sand of the beach and the straggling grass around the beach. They seemed to explode straight upwards, and there was very little chance for the man who actually caught his foot on the trip wires which-led from some of them or touched the lever which exploded others. On the other hand, the explosion of the first few put the landing force alive to their existence. A searoh was made for them, a number were found and harmlessly exploded, and the daugerous areas were identified. Tho Australians told me that not more thau seven men, so far a.s they knew, were

killed, although more than twenty mines were blown up. MAKING A HARBOUR. The first work of the bridging train was to get into position a jetty composed of barbed wire. From that moment onwards they were up to their waists in water lauding stores and explosives, fixing up further piers all round the north snore of tue bay, until the bridging equipment which left Australia preparea for the Rhine or whatever rivers the Army came across had found its final use in the making of a busy harbour, not so much unlike any other harbour when light is low and you see the ceaseless traffic raising up the dust along the harbour side amidst the swinging of lights and.groaning of wheels. \ ' It has not been done without loss or life —that reaches every part of this campaign. The whole of tne work has been done within range of the Turkish shrapnel, within sight of the Turkish observers. The men here, too, told me that so far as they were concerned tne Turk had played the game. The third morning of the landing a very big job had been done in very quick time. Tnere came a message from the Chief Hospital saying that nearly 300 wounded were waiting to be taken off and ask ing, " Can Australian Bridging Train erect a pontoon pier for us?" The train at once made up the pontoon into rafts, and as there were no pinnaces available pulled them ashore themselves with oars for a distance of a mile and a half. The khaki colour of the pontoon probably made the Turks think they were filled with troops and they shelled them. But the rafts reached the shore, and within twenty minutes of touching it a jetty 130 yards long had been put together, anchored arid connected up, and the hospital was embarking wounded from it before the last days were fixed. Near that pier a Red Cross flag was put up. The Turks shelled it, and afterwards sent a letter apologising for doing so, but saying that they must shell it again if troops were allowed to pass along the_ beach through the ground which this flag covered. "I'LL HAVE TO SELL PEANUTS." ■The shell fire has meant a certain number of casualties, fortunately.few—four killed and I think ten wounded. They have taken their juca when it fell against them in the way that has become familiar at Anzac An able seaman named'Atkinson was hit by a shell while on duty near one of the piers. One of his legs had been blown away, but he sat up and asked the, doctor for a cigarette. " Well, dootbr," he said, "I'll have to sell peanuts now in Little Bourke Street." And there they are to-day in charge of the landing of a great part of the stores of the British Army. They are quite cut off from their own force. They scarcely come into the category of the Australian Force and scarcely into that of the British; they are scarcely Army and scarcely Navy, Who it is that looks after their special interests and which is the authority that has the power of recognising any work that they have done I do not know. If you want to see the work you have only to go to Kangaroo Beach, Suvla Bay, aud look around you. They have made a harbour.