SAILING OF MAIN BODY

Taranaki Daily News, 16 October 1930, Page 11

SAILING OF MAIN BODY

THE SIXTEENTH ANNIVERSARY / NEW ZEALAND IN GREAT WAR. One of New Zealand’s major war anniversaries falls to-day. Sixteen years ago, on October 16, 1914; the Main Body of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 10,000 strong, sailed out of Wellington Harbour, bound no one knew whithen Probably not one of that adventurous company in his wildest dreams, ever imagined that “pourney’s end” would be upon the shell-torn hills of a literally unknown land—Gallipoli. The eight gray-painted transports, which had been snatched suddenly from the uses of peace, ’ were guarded by two armoured cruisers, the British Minotaur and the Japanese Ibuki. Three weeks earlier the convoy had left the coast under the escort of three third-class British cruisers, the Philomel, Pyramue and Psyche, but had put back when it was known that Admiral Von Spec’s ill-fated squadron, the Scharnhorst and Gneisnau, were in the Pacific. The aid then given by Japan has often been gratefully acknowledged. It is most happily commemorated by a gift from the Japanese Government, a beautiful model ■in lacquered wood of the Ibuki, which is in the Dominion Museum, Wellington. Crossing to Hobart, the convoy went on to Albany, where it joined the Main Body of the Australian Imperial Force. Then came the sinking of the German raider Emden, by one of the escort, H.M.A.S. Sydney, an event of which the troops saw nothing, for it happened below the horizon. Some of the transports called at ■Colombo, while others went direct to Aden, and so to Egypt, the training grund for Anzac and all that followed. ‘ i