TURKS FIGHTING WITH DESPERATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXV, Issue 10713, 3 July 1915, Page 5

TURKS FIGHTING WITH DESPERATION.

A DETERMINED FRENCH ONSLAUGHT. ((Received Last Night, 10.4.0 o'clock.) LONDON, July 2nd. The Chronicle's correspondent says that the Australians and New Zealandevs threaten the communications with Achi Baba. Consequently they drew upon themselves the flower of the Turkish Army. Notwithstanding that the enemy's casualties already number 70.0C0, the Turks fight gallantly, and with desperation, realising that the fall of Achi Baba and Kilid Bahr means the doom of Constantinople. Describing the French operations at Kerevesdere on June 21st, the 'correspondent says that the seventy-fives drummed incessantly, to the accompaniment of tremendous reverberations from hundreds of twenty-fives and howitzers. i ■ , The French captured and recaptured trenches. They were ejected again and again. Then came the order that they must re-capture and hold the trenches,, British guns and howitzers were asked for, and immediately sent a bombardment, which was maintained throughout the afternoon. .It seemed as though every gun, on earth was pouring shells into the Turkish lines. - A third attack was launched on one trench in which the enemy, having run short of ammunition, fought with sticks, stones, and then fists. ° A battalion came "hurrying from the Turkish right, but was caught in the open ground by seventy : fives, and melted away. Six hundred yards of Turkish trenches were taken and held. In one trench, ten feet deep, the Turkish dead brimmed over. They had been valiant, these dead men. Officers from the west say that, as a fighting unit, one Turk is worth two Germans, in fact, with his back to the wall, the Turk is magnificent. The French casualties were few considering Iwhat they might have been.