THE FIGHTING ON GALLIPOLT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIX, Issue 175, 27 July 1915, Page 6

THE FIGHTING ON GALLIPOLT.

' Till^Yfl DEEDS ON "THE DAISY PATCH." ; I aVrENCH STRATAGEM. \ ■ THE "SEVENTY-FiTICS" AND i j THE BAYONET. ; ; OfT an Island in the lUed/terranean, \ | I 1 ih .Tune. ! • Suicide Gully, "Death CJnlly, Shrap- ; no\ Gully, are niir-uvs of spots near | Anzac Beach thnt aro_ as expressive las they are ominous, they are names ! that will never be forgotten by thoso | New Zealanders who went throrigii I the first few days of battle on the j Gallipoli Peninsula, and who have the ! good luck to return to their native land. Away down at Cape Helles, on ; the end of the Peninsula, there is a : .spot called the "Daisy Patch," a name that one would scarcely asso- ; ciatff with war. There amongst the green grass grew a profusion of wild ; flowers and beautiful daisies. They are growing there still, but amongst the daisies are patches of brown earth and small wooden crosses ■ that mark the last resting-place of several brave New Zealanders, who have given their all for the Empire. When our men went down there to help the Allies in the attack on Achi Baba', they landed safely and were marched about a mile up the road before they encountered the ■enemy's fire—shrapnel and common shell—which, however, fell wide. They marched a further'mile to a. beautiful gi-een paddock, where they commenced to dig themselves in. They stayed there all night, and next day (the 6th May) the- watched the French advance. On the 7th. in the afternoon, they march- ' ed out in pkitoons, but hadi not cover- ; ed more than a mile before shrapnel : began to burst over them._ It was i almost dusk, and they retired on to . the edge of a cliff, where they were , able to take c.- dv. One of the Otsjgo men .was kil.!<\l and one or tivo ; wounded. There, also, Colonel Peerless, N.Z.M.C. (of Nelson), with the Canterbury Battalion, fell, shot through the left thigh. Notwithstaiul- ; ing his fi2 years, he was always with ■ his regiment. 7 He has been for i several weeks in one of the military ; hospitals, at Alexandria, is now con-' valescent, and on a troopship return- j ing-to Gallipoli. | On the 7th May this force, which \ was the remnant of the New Zealand ' Infantry Brigade—<and would now . amount*to about a battalion in numbers—went a mile further inland, till they came to a farmhouse, and there they dug- in again. No sooner had ■■ they done this, however, than they ; were ordered to fall in for <i night ; march to the trenches before Achi 1 Baba. There was to be r.o lighting ; of pipes, and orders were given in ! whispers. On the way they passed, ; occasionally, wounded men coming '■ down from the front. One soldier, . seized with panic, imagined that the j Germans had got. him, and as he i started to announce his belief in loud' j shrieks, he had to be sent back to the I dressing station. A mile further on j the New Zealanders reached1 the ■] trenches, and quickly got into them. I Star shells were sent up by the enemy, \ and. lit iip the surrounding country, ) but the position was not shelled, and.l the New Zealanders bivouacked for ] the night), and slept in the trenches. ] Next morning, at 10.30, they got the i order to advance in column of pla- ! toons, the men deploying in the usual j way. They went at first over broken j country, but after a time came to a \ level plateau covered with wild : flowers. This was "The Daisy I Patch.". There the men began to i fall. It was evident that the "Turks ! had the range of it. I

SAVING THE WOUNDED. Captain G. Craig, N.Z.M.C., who was with the Aucklanclers, according to all accounts) did good work here in succouring the wounded. \With his orderly—one Stacey, a light-weight boxer--he dodged from cover to cover attending to wounded from the different regiments, including some of the Ministers, who were in the vicinity. Amongst the dead was the body of Lieut. Stedman, of the Third Auckland. He foil, shot through the heart, while leading his men. Indeed, he was one of the first to fall. In, the daisy patch, over which, the New Zealanders crossed before gaining the trenches, there were some twenty dead and wounded lying in. a zone swept by machine-gun and rifle lire. One of the wounded was heard to call out, "For God's sake send a doctor!" Every time the man moved ho drew the Turkish fire, and the bullets were all the time hitting the daisy patch and whistling over the trench in which our men had taken cover. Captain Craig, hearing the- wounded man's call, then left the trench and went to the wounded man's assistance, and went back to get this man. The first man he reached was the wrong one. He was dead. The doctor all the time under fire cr.t off this man's identification disc and put it in his pocket. He then found the wounded man and endeavored to roll him forward to the trench : but he was a heavy man -and the task was mi impossible one, so lie returned to the trench and called for two volunteers to help him to bring the man in. Two privates, Donaldson and Dalziel ('3rd Auckland), im- j mediately volunteered, and the three then went to the wounded man, lifted j him up and proceeded to carry him in, j the bullets whistling about them all i thi' time. N'.'Mi'in,^ the trench a sniper got Dr Craig and he fell shot through the thigh. At the same time DalKiol fell, r.hot through the ieg. Thus the three men fell in a heap just as they were on the point of reaching safety. Donaldson manai''el to drag the wounded man. into tiie trench, <md Stacey., the doctor's orderly, and others, got the doctor an-1 silso Daniel into the trench. Stacey, whom 1 saw the other day at Alexandria, made, light <4' his particular part of ,lhe adventure. "It was nothing," ho said, "1 was under cover nearly all the time," a statement tnat from oilier sources I subsequently le.-ii-ut wa.s not strictly atcv.nxii--. l-'tnci'v, however, dicw-ed the doctor's wound, staved with him in thf> Irc.'ici! fill sn\<>:htfa 11, and then necomp::nieu him on the three mile

\ .ionrnoy tn the dressing station and a. | si!bseqi;c?'.t ffc.n- and n-half mile jourf m-y lo^ihc beach. It "was a seven am! n-lialf miles journey for the stretcher-bearers, as the' route was not a direcL one, and it was 2.L"> a.m. Bel-ore they reached tho beach hospital. Ai'ti'v tlvev had gone about three miles oi' their journey the Turks burst a _si-i.r sheli over them -snd they received a burst of rifle fire from a

range of 400 or SCO yards. One of the bearers with the stretcher in front was_ shot through tho head. Dr Oaig is r.ow on liis way hack to his regiment on the Peninsula. A BJUIiLL\XT FRENCH CHARGE. On the afternoon of Saturday, the Bth May, while some of the Xew Zea- ! landers were lying in :i trend) at the Daisy Patch and singing a little to keep v.]> thru- spirits, a man'suddenly I called out that" the' French wore r-e- ---| tiring. Some time before they had watched rhem advancing in a long blue line. Now it seemed as if they had. broken and were retreating he-lto-r-skelter io their old trenches. The 'lurks, noting the retreat', came on on nias.-o. The French then retired to their second line, and the. Turks nr-mipiiy or-cupisd'' the first li !j(;_ m trencher;. Then the deadly il7 r)'s" got to work. They had the range to^ a nicety, ;::ul with high <?x----plcsive shells nnd shrapnel, they gave the enemy n terrible, time. The"fire was ro rnuid that a curtain of black smoko .;uul {lust fii-o^,", from the bursting shells, and under coves- of this cloud tho French infantry reformed and charged back with wild yells. What the guns had loft undone was accomplished with the bayonet.