THE TURK AT BAY

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 63

THE TURK AT BAY

TRENCH WARFARE ON GALLIPOLI. THE OLD AND THE NEW. (From Malcolm Ross, Official War Cop. respondent with the 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 nast he ha* been very quiet, and a threatened attack from a reinforced Turkish army has not, so far, materialised. W® were told that Enver Pasha 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 wo 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 down in ditches and look at 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 Holies and at Anzac. During such times an army, to use a colloquialism, becomes “ bored stiff.” 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 lines. At this latter game we have a decided advantage over the Turk, for not only have we more guns and shells on land, but wo ''have also the ships that patrol the Gulf of Saros. The Turk, apparently, has to be sparing of his field gun ammunition, and there are now also indications that he is endeavouring to exerwso a greater care in husbanding his cartridges for rifle fire.

The New Zealanders, in common with the other troops, are anxious to have, another go at the enemy, and on all hands disappointment is expressed that he has not coma on. For the time being, the safest place on the battlefield is the trenches! That is one of the anomalies of modern warfare. But a change will come over the scene ere long. THE NEW AND THE OLD.

The other day I was able to inspect the remains of an inflammatory shell that was fired into our area of defence. The charred case was 3in in diameter and 15in long. The shell, which evidently oamo 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 set it alight with bombs. This peninsula, as everyone knows, baa been the scene of battles dating away back to the time of the Venetian Doges, and probably even to prehistoric times, when the real troglodytes lived in habitation* somewhat similar to those dug by the Now Zealanders on the outer flanks of Sari Bair. It is somewhat strange that in the 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 Station 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 Dufforin, on his way to Constantinople, in 1881, states that on reaching the Dardanelles be paid a visit to the fort, where he saw two enormous guns that threw stone balls “ like those yon see at the doorstops of country houses.” Apropos, a friend here, who was in the last Balkan war, tells me that similar stone cannon balls used in the time of Napoleon were dug up there in tha Albanian trenches, and at the old forts put out of action by our battleships at Cape Holies 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 they visit the peninsula—be enlightened regarding the other phase of the question. The allied forces have taken quite a number of prisoners, and there have been several deserters from the Turkish lines. Such prisoners as one has seen appear strong and hardy and well fed, though rather down-at-heel in the matter of clothing. Their clothes are mpeh too heavy for a summer campaign, and frequently one sees a man with his bare toes sticking through his boots. Most of the prisoners seem only too pleased to have gone away from their own. firing line.