ENVER'S ATTACK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3214, 20 October 1915, Page 30

ENVER'S ATTACK.

TURKISH MISCALCULATION (By Captain Bean. Official Correspondent with the Australasian Forces.) Copyright.—New Zealand Eights Secured by the Otago Witness. QABA TEPE, July 3. Tuesday, June 29, was an exceptionally quiet day. The Turks did not know what to make of our attack of the day before. For the first time since the first week we had looked like making a serious advance, and as the British were now making a considerable push from the south, they were not at all sure what we might be up to. They knew we had been tunnelling towards one of their trenches, just as we knew they had been tunnelling to meet us —each side could clearly hear the other | picking. The Turks showed every sign of nervous- ! ness. Just after dark a dust storm sprang up—the first of several nights of stormy weather brought on by the summer’s heat i —and in the dust they could not properly | see the space between their trenches and j ours. Immediately the first gust came I over to them the Turks in the trenches j which we had advanced against the day ' before set up a heavy fire, and kept it up for nearly two hours, until that storm had subsided. After that there was almost dead silence for three-quarters of an hour. It may be that this Turkish fire had also I another reason. During the first few days | of our landing we learnt that one of the I commonest Turkish tricks was to make a | great deal of noise at a part of the line, I and then attack somewhere else. They ! used to blow bugles and shout commands, i and exhort one another opposite one point, i and sometimes attack there—but as often | as not at some other distant point. This night almost all the rifle firing was at the south end of the line, and it finished at half-past 11. Exactly three-quarters of an hour later the. sentries at the northern angle of our line heard shouts of “Allah,” “Allah.” The trenches here at one point are only I about the length of a cricket pitch apart, and by the time the cry had been once . repeated there was a rush of Turks over 1 the parapet of our nearest saps. This was in the New Zealand portion of our line—the northern side of the triangle—which at the time was garrisoned by the 3rd Light Horse Brigade. We had been sapping out towards the enemy at two points—the enemy ■ knew these saps, of course, as well as we did, having the para- ■ pets of newly-turned earth right under their noses—and apparently their intention j was to take these two saps and as much I of the trendies behind them as they could ; in the first instance, and then make their further attack from there. They came provided with any amount of food —one man •■1 ith a haversack full of bombs, another with a handbag full of ammunition, another with a pack of cards—all of them with olives, tinned beef, plenty of dried figs, and water-bottles. The Turk has been untrue to all the ordinary ideas of him. He has fought on I the wdiole ,a very fair fight so far —quite ' as fair as most nations fight, any way eo far as evidence at present goes, but even if he has not indulged in the bloodthirsty atrocities with which his name is generally coupled, you would imagine that he would i be just the man for using the bayonet. I On the contrary, the experience of this 1 force sS far is that the Turk finds the bayonet an awkward weapon to use. He I mostly lies down on the edge of the trench | and fires either into that or over it. A j few nervous digs with the point of it was all the bayc let attack that some of these great, grim, dark men seemed to make. The men who had drawn aside from parts of the sap in which the Turks had jumped still held the Turks from the ends of the sap, and they now bombed these Turks from both sides, until they were ail killed, and then reoccupied the sap. In the meantime a second rush was made from the Turkish trench. These rushes were bravely made, but the Turks scarcely seemed to know where to go. They never even looked like succeeding. At last some of them tried to get round between the edge of the trenches and the cliff, or sheer hillside, which faces the sea. Others tried to creep round the inland edge of this side of our triangle just where the gully above mentioned runs down into the apex of our line. Those who tried to get round by the cliff met some very perfect trendies, and were shot down thickly. But some of them managed to get either over or round these, and came suddenly—two or three of them-—upon a set of kitchens by tho rear of our advanced line. There was a sentry stationed over the place with two mates in a shallow trench. The two mates were sleeping at the time. The sentry tried to bayonet the leading Turk, and missed him. He then grappled him, and the first thing that the two sleeping men knew of the attack was when the sentry and the struggling Turk fell in on top of them. This Turk was either killed or made .prisoner, and his companions ran at once. The Turks also ran on top of a machine gun position before they were seen. The leading Turk managed to bayonet one of the gun’s crew through the arm, and was trying to baronet the sergeant of the detachment, when the latter, who could not get his gun into position in time, snatched up a rifle, and shot the Turk on the parapet. The attack between the trench and the cliff utterly failed. This part of the fight belonged almost exclusively to the Ist Light Horse Brigade. About the time when this attack was preparing, the destroyer, which at night always keeps her light turned on this flank,- switched it on to the high slopes of the main ridge, from which the Turkish attacks seemed to have come. The circle

of white light showed' up a line of men moving down, from one trench across the open to the trench below it. Some of our machine guns got on to them, and 40 of them are said to have been counted there this morning.