BACK TO GALLIPOLI

Otago Witness, Issue 3384, 22 January 1919, Page 59

BACK TO GALLIPOLI

RELICS OF A GLORIOUS PAST.

It is one of the fateful turns brought aboul by the. cessation of war that our troopsstand once more on the soil of Gallipot (says a London paper). Describing the new. landing there, in a despatch sent from Lemnos, Mr H. Collinson Owen writes: ' The contrast between this landing on November 9 and that other famous and heroia one of 1915 was as great as could bo imagined. Our men landed on a deserted peninsula, peopled only by British dead and filled by great memories that will live so long as our race endures. . They stepped ashore immediately beneath the bows of the Rive? Clyde, that gaunt and battered tramp, frorni out of whose sides our men streamed under a storm of machine-gun bullets. : . But there was nothing to oppose the land* ing his time. On the contrary, at that summit of the steeply rising beach, which we captured at such heavy cost, stood a little group of Turkish troops looking down quietly, on British troops disembarking. They were: Turkish artillerymen waiting to hand over the heavy guns of Oape Holies, which have for long been waiting ready in anticipation of a renewed' British attack on the Dardanelles. '•.-■■ '

We left Mudros at 4 in the morning toj see the landing, and-arrived off Cape Hellea about 9.

Later in the day,, up towards the Narrows, we saw the remains of the submarine El 5, which ran ashore when trying to ascend! the straits, and was gallantly torpedoed from a launch by our own men under heavy fire. A little further up was the rusty bottom of the Turkish battleship Messudiyeh, looking like an immense turtle, and marking one' of our submarine successes, that caused much consternation to the enemy at the time. . i

At various times we passed over deep' waters that concealed the remains of sunken, British and French battleships, the Ocean, Irresistible, Majestic, Goliath, Triumph, and Bouvet —a small part of the price we paidi in our endeavour to foroe the Dardanelles and give Russia the help she had bo urgently, asked for.

Wo anchored just off the beach where the River Clyde was run ashore, immediately] outside the breakwater formed by stripped skeleton of an ancient French battleship Massena, and an old hulk of a Messagerie steamer. A motor boat took us ashore, and W 8 passed under tho sides of the scarred andl gallant old tramp. The wooden gangway that led down to the lighters waiting alongside and down which the very first men who landed on! Gallipoli ran or stumbled is still intact, and it was just beyond this stairway down toj death and glory that we stepped ashore from the launch. It was strange, indeed, to put foot on thai/ narrow shore, realising how much we had paid to take it and find it now completely," deserted.

Turkish troops occupying the peninsula' had been removed some days before, for the time being, not a single Turk wo* to be seen. V Beach along to Cape Helles, and so to W Beaoh, Is as lovely and barren a strip of coast-line as can be imagined. One wondered again how we had ever been able to land on it, and how we had been able to live and remain there. Above us ta our right were the remains of the old forf of Sedd-el-Bahr, which tho fleet knocked tq pieces In tho first bombardment.