MESOPOTAMIAN CAMPAIGN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16213, 26 April 1916, Page 8

MESOPOTAMIAN CAMPAIGN.

BOY OFFICER'S BRAVERY.

TURKISH TRENCHES REACHED.

" Mom than a fortnight has passed, without my sending a letter from Mesopotamia," wrote Mr. Edmund Candler, the war correspondent, recently. " There has been plenty to writo about after the actions of Sheikh Saad, the Wadi, and in Suwacha Marsh, but the view has been taken that my description of these engagements, Bave in a >cry mutilated form, might be helpful to the enemy. In the meanwhile the Turk can glean nothing from an account of two glimpses f>t the last battle—one from the support trenches, the other from their own lines. •' On January 21 the Turks were holding a strong position between the fjuwacha Marsh and tho left bank of the Tigris, four miles out of our camp. It wag a bottlo-neck position, with a mile and a-baJI of front; $jiero -vas no getting round them, and the only way was to push through. We entrenched in front of them. On the 20th wo bombarded them with all our guns and again on the morning of tho 21st, preparatory to a frontal attack. When the bombardment began I went on. The thunderous orchestra of the gms shook the earth and rent the skies. The men I was with were- mostly a pew draft. I could sco they were afraid, but they were very brave. Word was passed along to advance to tho next bit of cover. "After the bombardment had ceased the riflo and Maxim fire ahead was continuous like hail on a corrugated iron roof, J found the brigade headquarters. We had got into the Turkish trenches, the general told me, but by that time our line was sadly thin, and we had been bombed out. Things were as they were. At noon the rain came down, putting the crown upon depression. All day and all night it poured. " I met very few who had been in the Turkish trenches. There was one boy, the only officer of his regiment who came out of it alive and unwounded, and he had a bullet through his pocket and another through his helmet. He was full of the story, told it with a naive matter-of-fact simplicity, with a kind of bated wonder at being alive. It was a miracle that anyone had lived through that fire in the attack and retreat, but the boy and his men had been in the Turkish trenches and held them an hour and a-quarter. Oddmonts of other regiments had got through, two British and two Indian. I saw their dead being carried out during tho truce the next day. "The boy had cleared a small redoubt 50yds in front of tho line with his revolver. The Turks had dropped their rifles and run. Once insido the trench he lost all count of time. 'It might have been half an hour, it might have been three hours and a-half.' he said. As a matter of fact, it was an iour and a-quarter. The trench was soon empty, and he was 'as saifo and snug in it as in a house.' He found a machine-gun, ' and turned it on the second record line and over the traverse on to the Turkish left. Tho machine was a difficult pattern; :t , jammed every six or seven shots. Ho took out the feed, cut the belt, ejected tho cartridges, shoved the belt in again, and played with the thing like a toy, till the Turks came bombing down to the lino right on to his traverse, when f.i put five riflo shots into tho gun and left."