"NO QUARTER!"

Otago Witness, Issue 3196, 16 June 1915, Page 37

"NO QUARTER!"

COLONIAL TROOPS AND THE TURKS. LANDING ON GALLIPOLI PENINSULA, GRIM WORK IN THE EARLY DAWN. Coropral C. R. Crocker, of Derby street, St. Albans, related an interesting story to aLyttelton Times reporter' on Sunday night. Corporal Crocker was one of the men invalided home from Egypt, and ho arrived iu Christchurch on .Sunday. He loft with the Main Expeditionary Force, attached to the Mounted Brigade Field Ambulance. He was six weeks in Egypt, when lie took ill with influenza, then ho got scarlet fever, which, after 11 weeks in the hospital, has left him with kidney trouble, and, despite his requests to be allowed to stay, the doctors sent him homo. Corpora! Crocker was in camp when the. New Zealand and Australian troops left for the front. The first lot, he gaid, wont away quietly. Ho believed it was part of the Canterbury Battalion. It went away from the back of the camp. The others, he said, got a great send-off. The mounted men cheered them with the greatest enthusiasm. When it was known that only infantry would be taken, Corporal Crocker says that- 75 per cent, of the mounted force volunteered for service on foot,, leaving the remainder to look after the horses m Ofynp. and they were told that there would be plenty of work for them later on, and their request was refused. It. has evidently been subsequently acceded to, as the mounted, men are now figuring in the casualty lists. RETURN OF THE WOUNDED. The greatest excitement prevailed; when the wounded began to arrive. “ Wo were in hospital at Heliopolis, a.t the Palace Hotel,” said Corporal Crocker. “It is a magnificent place, and has been turned into a hospital. It had a good many medical cases before the wounded began to arrive, and as many as could be shifted were drafted away to make room for them. “1 was anxious to see them,” said Corporal Crocker, “ for I knew I was .going home, and 1 wanted to see if I knew any of the boys. But it was a rather difficult thing, for they were closely guarded. Moreover, the New Zealanders, we heard, were not coining into Heliopolis, but were being taken elsewhere, but where we could) not find out. Most of the wounded coming into the Palace Hotel were Australians. There were a few New Zealanders, too. The trains brought them right into the grounds. It is really a tramline, but there is an extra lino for the broad-gauge railway, and the wounded were brought in on them. I think there wore 15C0 at the Palace Hotel alone. The trains wove very frequently arriving, and the staff was kept constantly at work. STORIES OF THE LANDING. Wc heard all about landing from the wounded we talked to. Have you been informed that the warships did not shell the coast before the landing? Well, according to what the Australians told mo they did not, and 1 think some, of the men wondered why. Anyhow, they told ns they tried to surprise the Turks by landing in the dark. But the Turks wore prepared. “ The Australians made the landing, and the brunt fell on the 9th Battalion —the Queenslanders. They wore specially chosen for the most difficult task by Sir lan Hamilton after the last big parade as being the best men for the job. Well, the wounded told us that they got into the boats and rowed as silently as possible towards the shore. The minutes passed, and they said, the suspense was terrible. They didn’t know very much of what the Turks had ready for them, and as the shore began to loom up tlic suspense was terrific. They wore all expecting something to happen any minute, but the boats crept nearer and nearer in silence until the men felt like crying out. Then it happened. They told igs that the noise of the Turkish lire was like that of hundreds of machine guns, yet it was gladly welcomed by the men, to whom the suspense had been a trying ordeal. And yet afterwards they found only 16 machine guns in the Turkish trendies. “ SIMPLY MOWED DOWN.” “ The bullets simply mowed them clown. And then they struck barb wire entanglements even under the sea. These caught some of the boats, and shell and shrapnel blew whole boatloads out of the water. That is where some of the missing wont. Some were picked up, but many wore lost. Amid a hail of bullets the men jumped ashore trembling with pent-up excitement and eager for the fight. I forget how many yards one of the wounded said ho had to cover over a Dare, bullet-swept patch, but it was two or three hundred, any way. The men were so intent on getting to grips that they didn’t lire a shot. They went up the first hill like lightning and with a grim purpose. They bayoneted, every Turk they came across. One chap told us some of them throw up their hands, but no quarter was given; the men were mad with the lust for killing. AN AUSTRALIAN WAR CRY. “ To show you how commonplace phrases stick and become famous. In Egypt the horses used to bo taken oat and sheltered under the palm trees. Natives used to come along and try to sell boiled eggs. Their cry was ‘ Eggs a cook, eggs a cook.’ The men didn’t want them, so they used to say, ‘ Imshee. Tallah,’ which means ‘Go! Clear out!’ Well, the wounded told us that when the Australians charged with the bayonet they yelled at the top of their voices, ’ Eggs a cook ! Imshee, Tallah ! Eggs a cook 1 Imshee ! Tallah !’ It had become their war cry. “ Snipers were everywhere it seems, and good shots, too. They picked off the officers, and the men say that they acted almost, entirely on their own. After the one big liill there wore a succession of smaller ones, and they took throe altogether. Snipers also shot the stretcher-bearers who went to tend to tho wounded.” QUEENSLAND BATTALION’S HEAVY LOSSES. Tho New Zealanders, stated tho wounded man, did not land till 10 hours later. The Australians, who had obtained a footing,

had to stick it out on their own all that time; the Turkish are was too intense to allow of reinforcements landing any sooner. Wo heard that, cut of the Queensland Battalion, which is over 1000 men, only 28 turned up with whole skins. “The cables have told us that one Queenslander bayoneted a Turk and heaved him back over his shoulder,” said the interviewer. “ I can quite believe it,” said Corporal Crocker. ‘ they are tremendously powerful men, and at that time they must have been capable of anything.” “We have heard that the supporting warships found it impossible to locate the Turkish batteries.” “ Yes, the wounded told us about that. It was mentioned in connection with the fact that the coast was not shelled preparatory to the landing. The Australians appeared to think that a reconnoitring hydroplane might have found something to shoot at; but it seems that none was sent. One thing the wounded arc sure of —all of them arc unanimous in saying that, if anybody but the Turks had opposed the landing, not, a man would have set n foot on shore alive. From what I heard, there cannot bo much doubt about th.it. “ DASHED OUT HIS BRAINS.” “We wore told one or two incidents by the wounded. A couple of stretcher-bearers wore carrying a wounded man back from the fighting when they came suddenly upon a Turk. 'lids enemy rushed at them with the bayonet. The loading stretcher-bearer dropped his. end and closed with the Turk. It was very close quarters, as they had come upon him very suddenly. He succeeded m wresting the Turk’s gun away from him, and then ho dashed out hie brains with the butt. 1 was told that by a man who saw it. KILLING THE WOUNDED “We were told that an officer was wounded and attended to by the medical men as best they could ’ at the time, and they left Jiim, as they thought, in a place of safety. Some time later the Turks again occupied that ground, and they killed the officer. Of course, I can’t say whether that was true or not, but the wounded said it was correct. That was what made the men so mad, and they wont at it with the bayonet. They did not use bullets, but wanted to ‘ foe! ’ the kill; wanted to get their hands on their enemies. “ The Australians did not know much about the New Zealanders, and I wasn’t able to see any of our men. Do you know that four hours after the fight the transports were steaming back loaded with the wounded. It seems funny when you think of it. Only a few Lours between health and injury. STRUCK BY SHRAPNEL BULLET. “ Most of the wounds were bullet and shrapnel. One mail had a shrapnel burst near him, and a bullet hit him at Uic back of the hat. It passed through the crown, and, striking the- braes badge, twisted it all up and caught the bridge of his nose. lie had other wounds, too. The Turks used the latest sharp-pointed bullets. I saw a cartridge with a pointed bullet. It had the star and crescent on the base of the ehell. The wounded also say that the enemy used expanding " bullets. One or two men who were struck in tl o forehead had the top of their heads taken away. The wounded looked very serious. It was not hard to see that they had been through a very trying time and had rot got over their impressions of wav at first hand. lam sorry I did not see any New Zealand wounded, but it was not possible. The wounded began to arrive at the end of April, and we left on the fourth of May.

THE INVALIDED NEW ZEALANDERS. “ Most of the men who have been invalided broke down in the training. There was a lot of dysentery, sand colic, tonsilitis, and pneumonia. The doctors told us tho sand was horribly septic owing to tho filth of the natives. The climate, too, was very trying. The temperature would bo 100 degrees in the daytime and drop to 40 degrees „at night. You have to bo pretty tough to stand that. And tho hot winds! It was like opening an oven door. And tho sandstorms lasted for days, while there wore flics in millions. Previous illnesses came out in training. A man who had his leg broken years ago found it swelling on hard marching, and some weak hearts were discovered. Pneumonia has left a lot of affected hearts, too, so the doctors tell us. I do not wonder the medical examination is strict. If you have anything wrong with you the training will find it out.

“ The main force wont away with tho First, Second, and Third Reinforcements and the Fourth went straight there. We were very much chagrined that they took cur mounted ambulance reinforcements and left us (tho main body) behind. It seems that- the doctors didn’t want the main body interfered with. They found themselves terribly short of ambulance men, especially when some wore shot. The attendant I had in hospital has been wounded, 1 see. “ We were well treated on the way out, ospeially by Mr H. J. Manson, tho representative of the New Zealand Government in Melbourne. Ho advanced us 5s each on our pay. The people were intensely interested in us. They would stop us in the street and ask all sorts of questions, particularly New Zealanders resident in Melbourne. The captain of the Wimmera is a splendid chap. He treated us like heroes and wo gave him three hearty cheers on leaving the boat at- Wellington.”