A SOLDIER’S LETTER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11279, 3 July 1915, Page 7

A SOLDIER’S LETTER.

The following letter has been received from Private Allan B. Harris ;

St. Andrew’s Barracks (now turned into a hospital), Malta, Thursday, May 20th, 1915. My Dear Father,—My letter to you from Alexandria was only a few hurried lines as I couldn’t get anything to write on till the last minute. lam well enough now to go hack to the firing line. As there is some doubt whether you would get my note, there being a chance of the fellow' I gave it to 'forgetting to post it. I was not wounded but had a. severe attack of dysentry and for several days lay in the trenches in a very miserable state. The doctors had nothing to cure me so I was sent here on the boat with a few others with the same complaint and 500 to 600 wounded. In the few days sail from Gallipoli wo buried about 10 men that had died as the resuit of their wounds, I don’t think any of us will forget in a hurry what we saw on the Peninsula of Gallipoli and in particular the Tuesday of our first battle (April 37th). It was hell on earth and those that came through without being hit were very lucky. _As we | were doubling up the hill into the ■ firing line it was an awful sight to j see the hundreds of wounded, some being carried on stretchers, some walking with the aid of other men and so on, some covered with blood, all coming out of the firing line, but they nearly all had a cheery word as wo passed them. They seem to think had we not got up when we did to reinforce the Australians the Turks would probably have pushed them back over the hill. We got great praise for our work on that day, but it wasn’t without losing very heavily as you will have heard. We occupied this hill for a week, being in the trenches most of the time and were then relieved by the Naval Reserves, and the following evening we were put on a torpedo destroyer and taken around to the entrance of the Dardanelles and from there were marched several miles to a place called Krithia We were only there a day when we had to go back along the coast towards where we were before —only about four or five miles as the crow flies — but it seemed to me to be about ten miles as I was not then feeling too good, in fact that was the start of my illness. The day following our arrival there our boys had to get into it again and here also they lost fairly heavily. Lieut. Menteith and McDonald were killed before they got very far and McDonald had ■just been promoted a couple of days before to be Lance-corporal I was acting the same, but was not told I should remain a Lance-Jack. There will have been a great number of promotions as a great many of the non-coms, have been shot and the four Lieutenants have all been killed or wounded. Some very brave acts were done by both New Zealanders and Australians, but I suppose as far as V.C.’s orD.S O.’s are concerned not many would get a hearing. It seems to me one has to do these brave acts before a superior officer before he could get such a tiling as aV. O or D.S.O. The Turks get up to some tricks. Some of them get into our uniforms and have been known to come -right up to our trenches and when they get within a few yards they throw hand-grenades, which are pretty deadly things. Of course, this is generallv done at night, and the Turk or” German is certain to lose his life in doing so. There are a lot of German officers amongst them and most of them speak good English, It is awful to see the way some of our wounded have been put to death by them, and, of they don’t get much of a hearing if anv of them are taken prisoners by us.' They certainly deserve all they got. They shoot on our stretcherbearers the same as the rest of us, hut that is generally done by the snipers, who manage to keep concealed from our view cud iu many cases civiito close to our lines. Ihc\ , have been found iu holes dug out on i the top of a cliff—a hole just big enough to get into with a bole out over the cliff to fire through—others paint their faces, hands and clothes green and are very hard to pick up even at a short range. Our guns have played a great part iu ' this war, especially those from the boats —Queen Elizabeth in particular —I have often watched the results of shots fired into the enemy’s trenches, when you would see Turks, rifles, clothing and dirt, etc., living in all directions. On one particular hill it was more like a hig fire for about a mile in length with the continual shells from all the guns bursting abont it. Saturday morning —We had quite a number of “Tommy” visitors here last evening up till “lights out, and with the noise that was going on all round me I guess I have made a hit of a stew of this letter, and perhaps I have told you about things you don’t wish to hear, anyhow you can cut that out if you wish, lou can tell the McChesney girls, in case Johnny can’t get the oppportuunity to write, that he is quite all right, or at least was when I left: the trenches to come here, This'-, is a wonderful place with great walls of concrete all around the water’s edge and great guns mounted here and there, and theie are some fine buildings in the town The Maoris are here doing garrison duty, but I guess they will ; be, getting sick of that by this time. The fellows that were wounded in our first battle at Gaba Tepe were all taken to Heliopolis as far as I know and most of the others were brought to Alexandria or here to Malta. I have kept my diary entered up since leaving Zietoun so will he able to send that to yon at the first opportunity. If I send it now half of it will be crossed out by the censor. They are supposed to be pretty strict concerning that here, so there is a chanqe or some of this being crossed out. _ I will close now, hut will write again as soon as there is something to write about. ”