AT GALLIPOLI.

Otago Witness, Issue 3212, 6 October 1915, Page 82

AT GALLIPOLI.

A TRIUMPH 01’ “HOLDINGON.” (From Captain C. E. W. Bean, Official Reporter with the Australian Forces.) Copyright.—Now Zealand rights secured by tiie Otago Witness. GABA TEPE, Juno 16. One would not willingly seern to bo so occupied with the great feat of arms which tho Australians and Now Zealanders accomplished at Anzac as to fail in paying a tribute to the 29th Division of the British army or the magnificent fighting by which it established itself on the point of Gallipoli Peninsula. I do not suppose that the history of warfare can tell a more glorious story. Some of the Australian transports wore present on tho morning of the landing there, and I can best tell the story as seen through these Australian eyes, and afterwards learnt by myself on tho spot. There were many ships lazily rocking on the lake-like surface —some big warships and some transports, and beside them a very old friend the Askold —the familiar little Russian cruiser, which always seems to have tumbled into company with the Australians ever since she first acted as our guardship, when tho first convoy called at Colombo.

Suddenly a tremendous roar shook tho whole circle of sea and sky. The Askold had fired at the peaceful coastline, and the whole universe began at that moment to tremble with sound. Tho bombardment had begun.

The landing of an army from the sea in tho face of fire is a new thing in modern war, and one way the British were going to solve the problem was by taking an old merchant steamer, the R’vcr Clyde, manning her with tho Royal Navy, filling her with British troops, and running her ashore on one of the beaches they were attacking. They meant to beach her sideways on. The troops would then file out of square holes cut into tho seaward side of the hull and so into boats and lighters which would merely have to come round tho bows to land the men on the beacli a few yards away. THE BOMB A RDMENT.

Tho bombardment was like hell let loose. One minute, a peaceful, beautiful landscape ; the next, clouds of rolling bilious smoke upon the sea and indescribable confusion upon the land. For two hours it lasted. Volcanoes of dust shot into tho air, and then the cloud rolled across the land’s end until it gradually shut out all view. The haze settled upon the sea and tho transport on which our Australians were watching could not see clearly enough to toko up her exact position, and found herself almost tho closest inshore on tho southern side, whore tho French were to laud. The Australians watched, as if in a dream, an old French steam frigate, tho closest in on tho French side, getting her troops into tho boats. THE BEACHING OF THE RIVER CLYDE.

At 5.30 a.m. the River Clyde moved in, the first of the transports. She was taken a little up the Dardanelles, and then coolly run ashore, amid shells and machine gun bullets, on the beach, almost under the old fort. The shells which splashed around the vessel as she calmly steamed into the beach were five or six-inch stuff from the southern shore of the Dardanelles, four miles away. Machine guns pelted her like rain as she beached. The Turks had unshipped these guns, and withdrawn to some secure dugouts whilst the bombardment was going on, and they brought them out the moment it ceased. The bombardment never reached the majority of the Turk sh machine guns or rifles at all. The concussion and din had probably shaken the Turkish personnel, but had not shaken them sufficiently to prevent their returning to the trenches and crevices, from which they did terrible execution upon the British troops that day. The River Clyde came in with two battalions of infantry inside her—and a part of the staff standing on the bridge, as if they were on a pleasure cruise. For some reason she took the ground in a slightly different position from that intended, and with bows on to the beach, instead of parallel to it. The slaughter began before the troops wore out of the ship. It is said that machine guns wore turned on to the square open- I ings cut in the port side of the ship, and j the men wore swept down ’tween decks in- , side. Others were mown down as they went down the gangway into the boats and lighters. Boats were sunk. But, in spite of it all, some managed to fill and struggled to the shore. The transports, waiting with tense anxiety in the ofling, could see nothing of this. Other transports were landing strings ' of boats at the other beaches—they had been transferred first into the fleet sweepers, which ran in close, and then loaded their men into strings of small boats, i (Some of these fleet weepers were under i fire before the men left them, and one regi- | mont is said to have been played upon by a machine gun before the boats were filled. These things could be dimly seen whilst hour after hour passed, and still no word as to what happened on shore. Then, quite close to the transport on which our Australians were, there appeared a rowing bort- Two men wore at the oars and a young seaman at the tiller. As they came under the big ship’s side the young seaman looked up. Ho was holding the tiller with one hand, whilst round the other ho was trying to tie with his teeth a handkerchief; two of his fingers had been blown off. Ho was not thinking about his hand in the least —ho treated it as of no account at all; ho was intent on getting- his freight of men alongside the transport. There were 15 men in the boat, all wet through, and seven of them wounded. They had clearly boon picked out of the water. UNDER THE OLD FORT.

Between 200 and 500 men from the two batalions managed somewhow to struggle ashore. Many wore shot whilst in the water, and a man wounded even in the shallow water was often a man killed. They rushed across the beach and managed to get a narrow little strip of cover by lying close under the break of the bank whore the grass mot tbo sand. The landing was stopped eventually, so far as the River Clyde was concerned, and no more parties attempted to got ashore from her that day. The men lying down on the. beach gradually managed to steal around further and further to the right, and eventually they got up into the great ' Id stone fortress through the holes made in it by the ships’ shells. The wall was 12ft thick, of solid

stone masonry right through, and a hole 6tt by 10ft 1 ad been blown clean through it. The troops eventually got into the building and shot down or bayoneted the snipers in it. Afterwards they worked through the village, clearing it in the same way. Most of this was accomplished the following day, but whether a few men did not get into it tins first day I am uncertain—few of the men themselves probably know, and the accounts were naturally confused.

When the landing at Sedclul Bahr beach was hold up the bombardment by the ships was begun again, but in the meantime the other battalions of tho division were getting gradually ashore at some of the beaches to tho north. Tho Turks had snipers trenched on the tops of tho cliffs, and in the crevices and hollows. The Turks seem to have used their machine guns for this form of sharpshooting, just as they have sometimes done at Anzac, and the losses among the troops as they went ashore in tho strings of boats wore sometimes very heavy. Some of the strings of boats seem to have been broken up, and the boats struggled ashore singly as best they could. Where they touched land tho men worked up tho cliffs, and as tho day wont on a sort of fringe of soldiers managed to establish itself along tho very edge of the northern 'Tiffs. Some of them got into the Turkish trenches near the cliff) face, and from one beach they pushed some distance inland,_ but they had to retire at nightfall to their position at tho cliff’s edge.

WHAT PULLED THEM THROUGH. All day through a tornado of shot and shell the remnant of tho force hang on. Nine men out of 10 would probably have said! that tho landing had failed, but the strength of tho British troops was exactly tho same as it had born a hundred times before during their country’s history—the quality of holding on, oven when everything seems to be against them, and when by the rules and logic of war they ought to retreat. Goodness knows' how manv battles have boon won by British troops simply by that extra ounce of endurance which, when everything else seems to topple and the rest of the universe is all for falling back, somehow manages to drag them just over tho difficulty and bring them down on tho right side. It was exactly the same quality which, when the Australians and New Zealanders had won their positions, and had to hold on to them all day under a hail of shrapnel enabled them to hold on blindly in tho face of an enemy whom they could not see until a whole night’s digging, amidst overpowering weariness and fierce attacks, had given them just enough shelter to tide them over three days of fighting. It ivas the Turks who were out first at Anzac, and so it was at Capo Holies, when by all tho rules of nature and of war it should have been tho British. ANOTHER HERO.

The second morning found the British far more secure on the top of tho cliffs than tho night before, because they had used the night to dig in. The rest of the troops, from tho River Clyde, had landed with comparative ease, and they pushed on this day through the fishing village and on to the hilltop above the sea. But it is not an accident, that British infantry is such a disheartening enemy for any troops to have to face. Tho 29th Division hung on in spite of losses which arc probably the heaviest which any division has successfully survived in this war, and its position was won. When the fort v> ith the barbed wire could not bo approached at the first attempt the British simply attacked it again. Three lots of men went forward with wire cutters, one after the other, before tho wire was passable. 'When other attacks failed a staff officer went to the head of the troops and led thorn again, and they followed him through in spite of everything. Ho was shot dead at. tho head of them as they entered the fort, but his work was not lost. Tho men who followed him went on —not back; the fort was taken, and history gained tho name of another soldier hero—that of Colonel Doughty Wylie. A day or two later the French, as prearranged, landed on the northern side of the straits, and joined the British.