RETURN TO GALLIPOLI

New Zealand Tablet, 13 February 1919, Page 13

RETURN TO GALLIPOLI

(By H. Collinson Owen, in the Daily Telegraph.)

Lemnos, November 10. The final act to one of the greatest dramas of the war was enacted yesterday (November 9), when, in accordance with the terms of the armistice with Turkey, British troops landed unopposed to occupy the Gallipoli Peninsula. The epilogue takes place in a few days, when a great Allied fleet will sail up the Dardanelles to Constantinople, the greatest and most significant of all the various demonstrations that have been imposed on. the Turk in the course of his chequered relations with the various European Powers. The contrast between yesterday's landing and that other famous and heroic one of 1915 was as great as can be imagined. Our men landed on a deserted peninsula, peopled only by British dead and by great memories that will live so long as our race endures. They stepped ashore immediately beneath the bows of the River Clyde, that gallant and battered tramp from out of whose sides our men streamed under a storm of machine-gun bullets. But there was nothing to oppose the landing this time. On the contrary, at the summit of the steeply-rising beach, which we captured at such heavy cost, stood a little group of Turks, looking down quietly on British troops disembarking. They were Turkish artillerymen, waiting to hand over the heavy guns of Cape Helles, which have for long been standing ready in anticipation of a renewed British attack on the Dardanelles. We left Mudros at 4 in the morning to see the landing, and arrived off Cape Helles about 9. Lines of black drifters and mine-sweepers, including a very efficient new type just out from Home, were cruising about on their hazardous task of sweeping lanes through almost countless thousands of mines laid both by ourselves and by the enemy. The work of gathering in this deadly barrier has been much greater than anticipated, and is the sole reason for the delay in the passage of the Allied Fleet to Constantinople. The first outward sign that we were in such historic waters and approaching such hallowed ground was the sight of a mast sticking up from the water off the rocky coast of Imbros. This marked the spot where the big monitor Raglan and the smaller one M 28 went down when standing up hopelessly against the Goeben and the Breslau at the time of their ill-starred sortie last year. Later in the day, up towards the Narrows, we saw the remains of submarine E 15, which ran ashore when trying to ascend the straits, and was gallantly torpedoed from a launch by our own .men under heavy fire; and a little further up the rusty bottom of the Turkish battleship Messudieh, looking like an immense turtle, marked one of our submarine successes that caused much consternation to the enemy at the time. The destroyer took us in close to Cape Helles, and everybody on board gazed silently at the barren and repellant coast that has made such a tragic page in our history. Some there were on board who had been through most of those events, and who felt strangely indeed in approaching so calmly and easily this "corner of a foreign field that is for ever England," that was won and lost again at such a price. We anchored just off "V" beach, where the River Clyde was run ashore, and immediately outside the breakwater formed by the stripped skeleton of an ancient French battleship, the Ma'ssena, and an old hulk of a Messageries Maritime steamer, which were grounded in this, spot late in the occupation of the Peninsula, in order to form a harbor against winter storms. As the landing of the troops was not expected for some hours it was decided ' we should go ashore and visit the ground which is compact of so much British history. It was strange indeed to 6et foot on that barren shore, realising how much we had paid to take it, and find it now completely deserted. The Turkish troops occupying the Peninsula had been removed some days before, and for the time being not a single Turk was to be seen. V beach along to Cape Helles, and so to W beach, is as unlovely and. barren a strip of coast line as can be imagined. One wondered

again how we had ever been able to land on it, and how wo had been able to live and* remain there. - - Above ns, to our right, were the remains of the old fort of Sedd-el-Bahr, which the fleet knocked to pieces in the first bombardment. We walked up the steep ground which had been held by massed machine guns and Turkish riflemen, passed over old trenches, both our own and the enemy’s, and saw new ones constructed in case of the further attack which for months past the Turks had been expecting. We walked to the top and beyond the first ridge, ■ and looked down over the broad sweep of a valley which dipped and rose again up to the rounded crest of that sinister hill, Achi Baba, “a natural fortress that anybody ought to hold,” as a gunner officer remarked. Every yard of the ground we traversed holds the remains of our dead, but there were no signs of graves or crosses to be seen. We returned through the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr village, and just b§low the front a French officer pointed out tae spot where General Gourand, the victor of Champagne, was wounded when visiting a French hospital.