MANY NARROW ESCAPES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16022, 14 September 1915, Page 9

MANY NARROW ESCAPES.

DANGERS OF THE TRENCHES.

"<ENEMY WELL FIXED.",

The conditions of the trench warfare en Gallipoli are described in a letter ■written on July 13 by Soigeant Arthur B. Cox, 15th, North Auckland, Infantry, to a friend in Auckland. Sergeant Cox is a native of Staffordshire, but for some years had been engaged in running a launch on the Wairoa and Otamatea Rivers, and is a -well-known athlete. "So fa-: I am all right," Sergeant Cox writes, '* though since I arrived here I have had hairbreadth escapes by the dozen. Only last week, a shell came over the sand-bags of the trenches and burst a thirty-second part of a second past my head. My face was burnt by the flame but nothing else happened. We have had machine-guns turned on us time and time again, rifle fire and high explosive shells and bombs but I always seem to be in the right place." Sergeant Cox writes that he received his first promotion three days after the landing in April. He was right through the famous battle at Achi Baba, a fortnight later. After that he was actinglieutenant for 15 days until officers of the reinforcements arrived and when he wrote wis acting as quartermaster-ser-

geant. "We have the enemy fairly well fixed," he continues, "and every day our position gets stronger. The enemy are entrenched very close to us, at places not more than 10 yards away. We are fighting just the same style as' in France, and to put one's head above the sand-bags is certain, death. Periscopes are smashed by the dozen. It is very rarely you see a Turk now. Between the trenches everything seems so" still and quiet. The scrub and the flowers are growing as usual, yet death awaits any other tiling that moves."