THE TURK AT BAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16506, 5 October 1915, Page 8

THE TURK AT BAY

TRENCH WARFARE ON GALLIPOLI. THE OLD AND THE NEW. (From Mamolk Robs, Official War Correspondent with tie N.Z. Forces.) 30th July. ' There can be no doubt now that we have the Turk at bay on his own peninsula. For some time past he, has been very quiet, and a threatened attack from a reinforced Turkish army has not; so far, materialised. We were told that Enver Pa6ba was getting together another army of 100,000 men to drive us into the sea. We mav have doubts as to whether his new army has arrived in anything like the numbers mentioned, but we, know we have not been driven into the sea, and that we are not likely to be. In the meantime, our forces also are, more or less, marking time. In modern warfare there are periods during which whole armies sit ditches and_ loo'k each other —generally through periscopes—over earthy or sand-bagged parapets,'neither side daring to show a head, ,or even a bit of a head. We have reached that stage on the Peninsula—both at Helles and at Anzac. During such times an army, to use a colloquialism, becomes " bored. 6tiff." The monotony is varied only by bomb-throwing in places, where the rival forces are but a. few yards apart, and by bombarding on sections where hundreds of yards intervene. Occasionally, however, the shrapnel and the high explosives burst with a diabolical accuracy on an enemy trench only a few yards beyond our own At this latter game-we have a decided advantage over the Turk, for not only have we more guns and shells on land, bait we have also, the ships that patrol the Gulf of Saros.. The Turk, apparently, hae to be sparing of his field gun ammunition, and there are now also indications that he is endeavouring to exercise a greater care in husbanding his cartridges for rifle fire. The New in common with the other troops, are anxious to have another go at the enemy, arid on all hands disappointment is expressed that he has not come on. For the timo being, the safest place on'the battlefield is the trenches! That is one of tho anomalies of modern warfare. But a change will come over the scene ere ° ng " THE NEW AND THE OLD. •.•

The other day I was able to inspect the remains of an inflammatory shell that .was 1 fired into our area of defence The charred cas.s was 3in in diameter and 15in long. The f.hell,. which evidently oame from a mortar, made a small hole' in the ground, and covered an area of Bft diameter in flames. The same evening-, at Achi Baba, the enemy threw' liquid into one of. the French trenches and endeavoured unsuccessfully to sot it alight with bombs. This peninsula, as everyone knows, has been the scene of battles dating away back to the timo of the Venetian Doges, and probably even to prehistoric times, when the real troglodytes lived in habitations somewhat similar to those dug by the New Zcalanders on the outer flanks of Sari Bair. It, is somewhat strange that in 4he warfare of the present day, when all the destructive inventions of modern science are let loose upon the battlefield, one of our men digging near the New Zealand .Field Ambulance Stat inn should come upon a relic of the old fighting in the shape of a round' stone cannon ball. Stone cannon balls were, however, in existence on the peninsula in comparatively recent. years, for Lord. DufFerin, on his way to Constantinople, in 1881, states that on reaching the Dardanelles he paid a visit to the fort, where he saw two enormous guns that threw stono balls "like those you see at the doorsteps of countrv houses." Apropos, a, friend here, who was in the Inst Balkan war, tells, me that similar stone cannon balls used in the time of Napoleon were dug up there in tho Albanian trenches. und at the old forts put out of action by our battleships at Cape, Helles there are still many such cannon balls to be seen. TURKISH' PRISONERS, . While the people of Constantinople are puzzled at the non-arrival of British prisoners there, they would—could thev ' visit tho peninsula—be enlightened regarding the other phase of the question. The allied forces have taken quite a number of prisoners, and there have been Bevcral deserters from the Turkish lines. Such prisoners as one has seen appear strong and hardy and &ell fed, though rather down-at-heel in the mattor of clothing. Their, clothes arc much too. heavy for a summer, campaign, and frequently one sees a man with his baro toes sticking through his boots. Most of the prisoners seem only too to have gone away from their own firing line.