ONE DAY AT ANZAC.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11510, 5 October 1915, Page 5

ONE DAY AT ANZAC.

FRESH TROOPS IN THE TRENCHES. DARING WORK WITH BOMBS. QUEENSLAND'S BRAVE FEAT. (By CAPTAIN BEAN.) GABA TEPE, August 21, It is the true history or otte day at i Anzae. Incidentally it will givo you sonio idea of Qui mi's Post., i They arrived in the morning fresh from Egypt in a little grey trawler. ! The trawler's crew, who for tho most ! part were* very much tho same crew that had dragged their trawl for many peaceful years over the Dogger Bank, ; had slaved most of the night in order to provide these new chums with a | cup of hot cocoa and a bowl of soup. Tho trawler's company had recently avI rived in their shio, after a wild winter in the North Sea. during which they had been washed clean from bow to stern by about two seething grey gales per week, and had seen precisely three rallies which a neighbouring destroyer had sunk. But this narrative is not concerned with hospitable naval reservists, but with a regiment not long since very fresh and green—the Queensland Light Horse. It is a veteraji regiment now. SONG OF THE SHRAPNEL. They found themselves at daybreak off a distant blue coast, with a certain long blue hill just opposite them—and on the side of the hill a long shallow triangle of more or less hare sand. They did not know that this triangle had been more or" lew worn bare by the daily lira of an army. They noticed a fleecy white puff or two unroll themselves once or twice on the hikside. They had heard stories of shrapnel, so they were able to diagnose it satisfactorily. They climbed into horse punts at the side of their trawler, and a small naval steamboat came and grabbed each horse punt, much as an ant might grab the leg of a stag beetle, and carried it off about as gracefully to the shore. While they were on their way there came something like the sound of a steam siren, and a couple of shells I burst liko rockets iu tho air ana whipped up the water about a hundred yards away from them. Some of thern guessed it was just somo of their own boys having a game with them, until tho burst came overhead, and one or their mates who was laughing and talking just then slid forward from his and lay with a startled look for the moment in the bottom of the boat. They were landed at a pontoon, aud for a morning they sat on the side of a knoll, whero they were more or less out of tho way—overlooking the beach, and wondering liko new boys at school where all the traffic was going that disappeared around the corners of the beach beyond the hospitals and biscuit boxes, aud the little Indian carts and Jmjre piles of hay trusses. That siren -it is very like a siren, only its croon conies down tho scale instead of running up it —came out of the air at them twenty or thirty times during: the morning, and burst more or less over theiu. They watched the pellets whipping up tho sea like ramarops. And onco a friendly stray donkey winch they had. been petting appeared to be stunned by an unseen whip, and started kicking for no visible reason—-the total effort of this re-sultory bombardment. Then they were marched off down the beach and up a gully at the end, and tho Turks from some observation post on tho capes north or south saw them •■oing, and the guns on Gaba Tepo Promontory two miles southwards oogan to plaster that gully with shrapnel, but just managed to miss their passing. And they came into a region of stray bullet*, which fluttered to earth with a like the last fluttering breath of M" dying man. Then the scrubby (rully took a bend, and ahead of them WPS a distant plateau across the valley's end. fvom which the Turks could see thenv—though they did not know this—and where they were all unconsciouslv protected by tho fact that some bedv cm the hills above was making it a. very dangerous matter for any Turk to shoot down that gully, no matter how well he concealed himself. They saw lines of tumbled hare earth along tho top of most, of the ridges above them, and vaguely understood these to be "the trenches." They were turned into the scrub in one gully to camp for tho They also vaguely understood that thev wcro to go into "the trenches" next day. HOW THE PERISCOPES WENT. About eleven o clock oho following ' mornim; they were sent, up tho gully ! to the head of it, up a very steep path to a point under a magnified rabbit burrow. Some of them tentatively asked tho infantry what it was liko iu there. k< Oh, you may get a few bombs/' was the reply. Then they moved, into a narrow, winding cutting in the red earth whero they had to run bent low lor a few yards, anu ducked under a .low earthen root into a tunnel not big enough properly to hold a man, and so into tho narrow j winding daylight again. On tho top | of the red cutting were ragged sandbags. It they had been older soldiers thev would have known that those sandbags wore suspiciously ragged. Occasional!" tho daylight was bridged by a short tunnel root —sometimes a moio buttress, From tho inside ot one outtress protruded tho fingers and part of tho boot of a buried Turk. It umy be considered that at this point the day of which this article tells had bogun. Having reached their trenches, they laid their rifles up against tho parapet and sat down on their overcoats and waited. The first thing they did was to have a look at the enemy. Having heard that it was impossible to put your head over the top, they put up j heir periscopes and stared into thorn. The scrub was not more than threo inches high, and strangely scorched and shrivelled. From some part* of the trench they saw the other side. In other parts tho scrub was bordered iweniv and t nitty yarns aviiiy b\ ;i row of low sandbags half emerging from tlie scrub. After" tho periscope bad been up for about a minute there was a tremendous eraok above t tho observer's head: a shower of glass fed round him. aud the top mirror bad vanished. Tho observer picked a- few bits of it out j of his forearm, and (hen watched the ,„>*< )imi' : s periscope go. As there was riy an unsuspected flaw in the system /,■' observing bv periscope they fell on the next obvious resort, which .' luneh. There i* a peivist.-nt story thai a.n j four so la<er t!ii- u'av a voice erieri out o< [iii> momy's iivueij. "Come on. j ~„i ... - Light, iiors-; \ve know you're Viici-o1 have never found or heard .•!' ;iio actual man thai heard it, and i i-evi'niv .1 believe that, I'ke almost all -ii.ni.-ir stories, it i>, nmn!<>: but, if it v,.,re, there ; s net tho Slightest need (<•> imagine thai then-.- was any spying m i.iie camo. All throimh dinner-time » cheerful conversation was going on up ami down the whole length of the r-0,.-tjon. Within fifteen yards in parts ran a trench crammed with swarthy gentlemen in skuU caps-"and'if any of them understood' e.lough, as some of them certainly do, they must have had an interesting time that morning. For days thev had scarcely aeon a periscope opposite them, nor heard the t-ound of an English voice—tho infantry had learned to talk in whispers in those trenches. And then suddenly at about midday .there had appeared whole galaxies of periscopes surveying tho seen-,

amount of spirited dialogue that did your heart good to listen to. BOMB CAUSES SCATTEK. The natural consequences followed pretty quickly—indeed, actually arrived before they had finished dinner. Someone saw a shadow i!t aerox*; tlr«t strip ot daylight above. Something fell on the parapet, and tnen roiled down into the trench. The nearest man who was digging into a half-finished tin of bully beef tihouted. " Look out, there's a bomb!" and dived about 81! 6ideways along the trench. Others took heaters into the tunnel of Iho nearest communication trench- A couple of seconds later tlio thing exploded like a big cracker. There was a cloud of dust, a nasty acrid fcmeli, and one of the rifles that had been against the parapet lay along the bottom of the trench with its stock broken clean iti two. Also tho walls of the trench and the sand'bags immediately above wore a curiously sagged expression, dishevelled with torn bits of cloth from the corner of an overcoat and tumbled sartd. After that another shadow flitted cross -something fizzed for a moment on the parapet—a. burst of dust, miu a sand'bag landed fair in the middle of somebody s back. Everyone laughed at him, and he laughed too. That was only the beginning of the shower. At first they dodged them by slinging themselves away from them. Further down the trenches some who had picked up rather better hints from the infantry started picking the bombs up as they came in and throwing them back—there wus just time to do it if you were quick and caught them like a cricketer —until tho Turks recognised their own brand of bomb coming back at them, and grow cunning and cut short the fuee,_when one of the gallant, exciteci youngsters who was throwing them back had his hand blown by the bomb he was throwing back. * They were driven backwards and forwards along the trench, until someone heard of, or hit on, the plan of throwing an overcoat upon the bomb, which usually deadened it a little if it got there in time. They would dodge be-, hind tho traverse, or throw themselves flat, but the explosion gradually caught first one and then another. SIX MEN PASSED OUT. They had been looking the other way. A rudi. a burst, the second man lulls against the first. They benu over him. lie is alive. Xiis first field dreeing is sewn into the pocket—-will it never come out? They have never seen a wound l.ke that before. A mass of lead in the cheek, a badly torn arm, a chest apparently almost smashed to pulp. Jioys straight from a Queensland station will tackle anything, and they bandage him somehow and pass him out. Six men have been passed out of the same small section, If the Turks ' come they will be pounced men ' who are getting eager for the chance. The end came in a curious manner. I don't know who the man was, but we will say bis name was Dave Browning, tie was a big Queenslander, anyway, and he was hit on both sides of his face by bits of a bomb. The iron was still there, and he was very angry indeed. We did not know much about bombs at that date, not what we know now—- | but Dave went and got an armful and carried them to a particular corner of the trench which was exceptionally warm. The northern end of our trench had no end to it to speak of. That is to say, that during a recent night attack we had captured temporarily part of a Turkish trench ten yards to I the north of it, and had cut a continu- ! ation from the northern end of our trench into the southern end of theirs. The northern end, therefore, merely wound round the corner and disappeared. We had managed to pub a breastwork of .sandbags about 3i't high across this trench., and kept a guard lying there while the Turks were four yards away around tho bend. Dave went straight to this corner virh his bombs and hurled them over one after another as fau as lie con Id into the Turkish trench. He guessed that was where the j Turks were, and apparently he guessed | right, for that trench must have been j cleared of 'Turks from that moment, i Dave felt better in his mind, and the i Turkish bomb-throwing slopped dead. Next day—not that day when they wero in Quinn's Post, but next day—they, came out. Dave had the iron picked from his cheeks by the doctor. WA'ilOH ON THE BEND. j The Turks only threw two or three bombs that night. lint all night long two men who had never seen a shot fired before that day had to lie on their stomachs out at the end of the trench just behind the sandbags—one youngster with three or four bombs and the other with his finger on a trigger watching the bend or that-Jrench as a cat watch.es a monsehole. The two v. ho came oil just before dawn had wen lor a moment the skull cap of one of the Turkish relieving picket over the ede.e j of the trench ahead, but it was the oniy sign and sound they heard for hours, liiey came out of Quinn's that morning. They know the place we!! enough now. Many a splendid man who started his life's work on a Queensland run or a Northern Rivers farm ended in one'of tho two magnificent charges that they h'we made from Quinn's Posf. A great deal has changed --but net the deadline-s of those fifteen yards of scorched and scrivclkcl > mb.