Branches Book

BRANCHES

Turks use nearly all them sort of bullets. I suppose you will have heard about poor Wilfred Dove, poor chap, he was killed the same day as we landed. He did not last long after he was shot. If you see any of his relations, especially his mother you can tell them for me he did not suffer much pain. Well after fighting there for a fortnight the New Zealanders were put on a destroyer and taken up to the Cape to reinforce the Tommys (British foot soildiers) and we lost a lot more of our chaps. You can tell Jessie that Clarrie Pearce is killed. He was with us when shot. He was a nice young fellow and he was a signaller (a runner who would relay orders to the frontline). Then there was Billy Patching, he was lively and joking about another chap that had shot at a dead Turk and he bobbed up for a second and got it right through the head. When we landed at the Dardenelles the beach there is just the same as the beach below our land in Ashburton and so you can imagine what it would be like to land in a small rowing boat and the Turks was waiting for us on top of the hills. And they shot a lot of our blokes before we landed. We just had to jump out of our boats into the water up to our waists and our packs nearly pulled us back into the water and of course we had to face them with our clothes drenching and lay out all night in the rain, so this war is not the game it is cracked up to be. After 2 weeks fighting we went to Cape Helles to reinforce to Tommies and the French and Gurkas and the fighting up there was different all together because it was flat country and we had been used to fighting on the hills. So it made a lot of difference but we managed to drive the Turks back 500 yards one day and that is reckoned a good advance but in doing that we lost half our men and it looked a great sight to see the wounded and dead laying amongst the daisies and poppies and all sorts of flowers.” After the landing was complete, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) set up base and began the hard process of invading a hostile country. Backed by the artillery of British destroyers, Reggie holed up with his mates awaiting more action. They were in constant danger from the Turkish snipers that littered the hills of the coast. Those snipers killed one thousand more men by the end of the invasion. Reggie nearly lost his head to a sniper on a patrol. “The worst Turk we hate is the sniper. They are the best shots of the Turkish army and they are hidden in the bush and up trees. We caught one the other day and it took us long time to find him as he was painted green. He was shooting at us and one chap got it in the leg and we stopped to look for the sniper and another chap got a hit

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