Gallipoli: Establishing a front

New Zealand soldiers at the Dardanelles.

What follows is a first-hand account of what life was like for New Zealanders at Gallipoli:

Trenches were deepened and fresh support and reserve lines dug wherever possible. Secret saps were made sometimes in front of the main line. Communications trenches were dug, wherever possible, to make for greater security.

Sandbag screens covered many of the corners that had been most heavily sniped. Cunningly concealed "posies" were constructed for the machine-guns " especially for those that were never to fire except in the event of a great enemy attack.

Snipers were hidden away in holes and corners and behind cleverly camouflaged loopholes.

At dawn a man in the line exposes himself a thought too long. Crack! A bullet pierces his brain and he collapses a limp heap in the bottom of the trench.

But a sniper in the New Zealand line has picked up from the sound of the single shot the general direction from which it came.

There seems no break, no sign of a loophole . . . Next morning a cap is raised on bayonet point. Crack! It flies in the air.

A moment later and a [trench] periscope is shattered but the enemy marksman in his eagerness to follow the result of his shot shakes one of the stunted bushes.

It is seen and the New Zealander settles down grimly to wait for the next move and again the day passes . . .

[Next day] a dummy head is exposed and then rapidly withdrawn. It goes up again cautiously.

The Turk fires and then quietly collapses for a New Zealand bullet has caught him between the eyes.

"That will set some bint weeping in Constantinople," remarks the Sunday-school teacher who has waited two days to kill a man.

He cuts a notch in the butt of his rifle and goes off to breakfast to receive the congratulations of his mates.'

-3/483 Private Ormond Burton, New Zealand Field Ambulance