TURKEY AT WAR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144859, 10 December 1915, Page 3

TURKEY AT WAR.

THE DARDANELLES. A TURKISH ATTACK. REPULSED WITH LOSS. SYDNEY, Dec. 9. Captain Bean cabled, on da to November 2C, that the Turks, probably uncertain whether wo were withdrawing from the Peninsula, attacked tho Anzao position, at the point where wo are nearest the summit on the main ridge, using bombs. None of the Turks readied our trenches. The'onemy losses were possibly sixty, and ours were nil. TURKISH OFFICIAL STATEMENT. CONSTANTINOPLE, Doc. 9. A communique says that a six hours’ vigorous attack on Monday enabled us to approach tho enemy’s main position, and prevented tho enemy establishing himself in fortified positions at Kettclawarah. In artillery duels at Sedd-nl-Bahr, Anafarla, and Ariburnu wo destroyed sonic trenches. GENERAL MACK EX SEN IN TURKEY. ROME, Dec. 9. General Mackonscn has arrived at Constantinople incognito, bent on dominating the internal'situation, which is causing anxiety, and seeking to reconcile Talaat Hey and Enver Pasha. General Mackcnsen visited the Gallipoli front, to which, a number of 12in. guns have been sent. They wore brought to Constantinople by the first through train from Germany. Four thousand secret agents aro assisting General Mackenscn. PROPOSED GERMAN EXPEDITIONS. ROME, Dec. 9. There is evidence that General von dor Goltz hopes to command four hundred thousand Turks and a . hundred thousand Gormans, advancing towards India in the spring. The Turkish advance guard is already en route to Bagdad. The Agcnzia Nazionalo states that tho Kaiser, at tho recent conference, asked Austria to contribute an army corps for tho proposed expedition to Egypt, but the Emperor Franz Josef replied that it was impossible. THE ROLL OF HONOUR. HOSPITAL AND PROGRESS REPORT. PEII niHS ASSOCIATION. WELLINGTON, Dec. 9. Admitted 19th General Hospital, Alexandria.—Private A. L. Aubrey (dysentery, severe). Trooper T. Lyon'o (bronchial pneumonia, slight). S T .Z. Field Artillery: Corporal G. W. Guthrie (acute pneumonia, dangerous). Auckland Battalion; Second-Lieutenant .L. S. Ashton (rheumatism, condition good). N.Z. Field Artillery.—Seriously ill of enteric at Imtarl'a Hospital, -Malta: Gunner F. C. Craven. Canterbury Battalion.— Previously reported dangerously ill. now pronounced out of danger: Private 1). -M. M'Rao. | Wellington Battalion,-—Removed from seriously ill list, Ricasoli Hospital, Malta; Lance-Corporal S. T. Darling Armv Service Corps.—Removed from seriously ill list at Ricasoli Hospital, Malta: Private R. Dare.

NEW ZEALANDERS ON AN ISLAND. A WELL-EARNED REST. ABSORBING THE REINFORCEMENTS! (From Malcolm Ross, Official War Correspondent with the N.Z. Forces.) A TRAWLER IN THE AEGEAN, October 4. For tho last four weeks now it has seemed strange to visit the trenches at intervals and to find no New Zealanders in the firing-line. For five months—- . over since tho memorable 25th of April —they have been almost continuously tinder fire. Like others, they have had their short spells away from the trenches in ono or other of tho so-called Rest Gullies, but even there the shrap- • nol and the high exposivo and the dropping bullet have found them out. Once, for a brief space, they had a spell on Irabros, whore a somewhat improved commissariat and tho delight of seabathing unmolested by tho enemy made a pleasant change. At Imbros they were still within sound of tho guns, and even the dull crackle of rifle fire was often

wafted on a favouring breeze across the Sea of Saros to the tented field which they had exchanged for the zig-zag trench and the hillside dugont. In Franco the officers and men, wo read, can get an occasional week off well behind the firing-line, or in England. Api parently even a week-end on the moors was possible in some instances. But on the Gallipoli (Peninsula, where we do not hold one inch of ground that is not .subject to gun-fire, such a delightful changn has been altogether out of the question. More recently, however, the situation has permitted a real change and rest on an island, where oven the sound of the guns cannot be heard, A voyage of a hundred miles by sen—there and back —in an uncomfortable Hull trawler, crowded with officers, soldiers, and sailors going about their master’s business, enables on© to visit them. A four hours’ journey takes you from Divisional Headquarters to linbros. Next day you board a trawler, and at dusk find yourself, after seven hours’ steam, entering u netted harbour, where lio a hundred ships of many hinds—French, (Russian, and English. There are battleships, cruisers, destroyers, hospital ships, tramps, and store ships. Towering above all there is a mighty fourfuunolled Leviathan. To any aeroplane j or spy that may chance this way. it j must be an object-lesson of the Empire’s power. Across the placid water I steam launches and motor-boats and ( other small craft wheel and glide as if. threading the figures of an intricate sea danco. Tbfi -am avian- ,n,n ii-lmnsa. and |

accuracy with which they start and steer and stop appeals to the landsman —indeed, almost surprises him. Not a nioment is wasted. Everywhere there is energy and power; nowhere confusion. You aro landed at one of tho several wharves that have appeared as if by magic along the shores of tho indented harbour, where of old the armadas of other conquering nations were wont to assemble. On the gently sloping brown hills aro many camps—tents -great and small, gloaming in the glaring sunshine that seems over present in' these islanded seas. Along one of the newly-made dusty roads, past tho splendid Canadian hospital, with its gonial doctors and trim, good-looking nurses, you pad tire hoof, perspiring under your pack, till you come to a shallow estuary that - seems to bar your further progress. - But on the shore you note officers and ; men aro taking off their hoots and socks ; and putties—even their shirts and trou- > acts. Presently you find yourself acting , similarly—you arc out of range of the i nurses non-—and forming a unit of the i lino that is slowly wading across to- . ward the farther shore, beyond which lie the Australian and- New Zealand rest camps. With uncertain steps yon ' pick your way across—tiie weeds and oozy mud reaching above your ankles. Tho bodies of a floating sheep and a ' dead horse aground cause you to make i a slight doto'ur to windward. There is , a quarter of a mile of this wading. ; Then you dry your nether limbs, re- ■ clothe them, and resume your march. In a quarter of an hour you are in the ■ Now Zealand camp, whore the tired veterans of the war are lazing in their tents, and the reinforcements, recently arrived, are lying on tho ground -beside their packs and blankets, where they have bivouacked, for as yet there aro not enough tents to go round. But it is no hardship to bivodStc in this mild air, for the dew; of night vanishes with ‘ the morning,, and there is no occasion , to duck for a dugout in order to avoid ’ the bursting shrapnel or the high explosive. Now that you have been in tho thick of' it on the Peninsula for some months, yon aro impressed With the almost unnatural calm. Then you begin to note tho difference in tho men. What a splendid typo.of manhood these New Zealanders are! Their rounded limbs and healthy, ruddy features contrast with the loaner muscle ‘and the thinner brown faces of tho infantry, who have, for months past, been fighting tho Turks, and the flics, and the dysentery. At tho head of tho little vale the Brigadier and two or throe members 1 of his staff are also resting. Half-right on the hillside, a few hundred yards away, in a separate camp, the remnant of the Mounted Brigade who have fought so magnificently are taking their case. For tho first few days—the mental and bodily strain relaxed—tho men were quite devoid of energy. There had been some fatigues, some physical exorcises, and a little drill. At first, too, there were numbers who wont sick. “How do you account for that?’’ I asked one man. “Well,” ho replied, “tho only thing I can think of is that many of them who were too proud to ‘go sick’ in tho trenches collapsed when they got bore and suddenly found themselves out of tho real thing. I know tho cast) of one man who was fighting against dysentery on tho Peninsula for three weeks.” he added. “Ho used to get two of his comrades to liolp him into tho trenches. Finally the doctor spotted him and sent him off.” Tn tho rest camp the men have been well fed, and for a few days they wc.ro supplied with malt liquor—a' perfect godsend tinder all tho circumstances. Fresh moat and bread and tinned milk also helped greatly to buck them up, and how they . were showing more energy, and cricket and football and quoits wore being indulged in. A band that had come along from Egypt played inspiriting music. This also was a factor in their recuperation. It was strange to hear music once again and all the familiar hnglc-calls of a camp. Ono felt as if one had suddenly dropped into another world. From the top of a hill overlooking the camp one pot a splendid view of the harbour and the tented slopes at the back of it. A broken marble column, half-buried in tho ground, recalled tho departed glories of ancient Greece. Eastward the harbour, crowded with a maze of shipping, which was only a portion of this modern armada, gleamed in the morning sun. Two of tho fourfunnelled greyhounds of the Atlantic and the four-funnelled Russian warships. which tho Tommies have christened “The Woodbine,” were prominent features in tho scene. One the promontory, stretching between tho harbour and tho estuary wo had crossed, was another camp and a great hospital. Other camps stretched up the rounded brown rocky slopes, and across another estuary, in a fold of the hills, wo could see the French camp. One became impressed with the magnitude of tho great operation that the modern Huns had imposed upon us. A few Greek villages, their brown walls and niddy tiled roofs a note of colour in the scene, clustered in between, and a few men in khaki wandered in their narrow winding lanes. Tho night had been cool, but with the morning came a balmy air from tho southward—the tail end of some sirocco or khamseon, robbed of ,its desert dryness by its journey across tho seas. Amidst such surroundings tho Now Zealanders were recruit-, ing, refitting, and absorbing their reinforcements preparatory to getting oncemore into “the real thing.” That evening some of the new men marched in to the music of their hand and the cheering of tho comrades already in camp. There were meetings with old friends and inquiries about •others who, alas! were well dug in in . their last trench. There were tales, i -too, of glorious deeds—modestly told— i done by the living and the dead among 1 the steep slopes and narrow vales of the Peninsula. These ‘wore often simple epics.that will one day adorn the pages of our history in a far land. As I left the camp arid waded hack across the estuary, I could not help thinking of a fitting remark made by tho Brigadier.: “The mothers of Now Zealand can hold their heads high.”