ACTIVITY OF SNIPERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3201, 21 July 1915, Page 55

ACTIVITY OF SNIPERS.

BURIAL PARTY’S RISKS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, July 19. Colonel Malone, of Taranaki, who distinguished himself at the Dardanelles, and who has received special recognition from tho War Office, supplies some interesting sidelight on the war in a letter to Mr Harry Penn, of Stratford. “I am very fit and well,” says Colonel Malone, “and am enjoying life as I never enjoyed it before. You must not think me brutal or callous; but, though many things are dreadful and horrible, yet there is no flread of horror. This very paper was taken out of a dead Turk’s haversack, and he had been dead for 14 days. You may be able to imagine what he looked like. He was one of about ICO, all on about an acre of ground, stricken down in lines and heaps. They were within 300 yards of where I had my headquarters. For lour days we could not bury them, owing to snipers. Large numbers of our ovyn dead lie, and must bo unburied. We tried to bury a lot of 12., but three of our burial party were killed and two were wounded. Night and day bullets are flying about over tho fighting ground. Even in the maze of the trenches we dug in the first place there were scores of our own and Turkish dead within a few foot of our and well within our own linos; but it was impossible to get to them. When we had to leave, that was a trial to our nerves; but our men seemed to bo nerveless. You may wonder what I am doing with a dead man’s haversack. The General Intelligence Staff want all the information they can get, and we look for papers in every dead man’s kil we come acrose. and so I often have a search myself. Moreover, we ought to get the dead man’s pay book; so as to lot the Turks know who is dead. They don’t carry identity discs. Instead, a man carries, or has carried, an enormous quantity of ammunition on him, sav 481b—400 rounds is quite common. He has. however, very little food or anything else.”