Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
The battery at Erenkeui had also been subjected to a heavy bombardment,
but it had suffered little. Unlike Dardanos, it was situated back of a
hill, completely shut out from view. In order to fortify this spot, I
was told, the Turks had been compelled practically to dismantle the
fortifications of the inner straits--that section of the stream which
extends from Tchanak to Point Nagara. This was the reason why this
latter part of the Dardanelles was now practically unfortified. The guns
that had been moved for this purpose were old-style Krupp pieces of the
model of 1885.
South of Erenkeui, on the hills bordering the road the Germans had
introduced an innovation. They had found several Krupp howitzers left
over from the Bulgarian war and had installed them on concrete
foundations. Each battery had four or five of these emplacements so
that, as I approached them, I found several substantial bases that
apparently had no guns. I was mystified further at the sight of
a herd of buffaloes--I think I counted sixteen engaged in the
operation--hauling one of these howitzers from one emplacement to
another. This, it seems, was part of the plan of defense. As soon as the
dropping shells indicated that the fleet had obtained the range, the
howitzer would be moved, with the aid of buffalo teams, to another
concrete emplacement.
“We have even a better trick than that,” remarked one of the officers.
They called out a sergeant, and recounted his achievement. This soldier
was the custodian of a contraption which, at a distance, looked like a
real gun, but which, when I examined it near at hand, was apparently an
elongated section of sewer pipe. Back of a hill, entirely hidden from
the fleet, was placed the gun with which this sergeant had coöperated.
The two were connected by telephone. When the command came to fire, the
gunner in charge of the howitzer would discharge his shell, while the
man in charge of the sewer pipe would burn several pounds of black
powder and send forth a conspicuous cloud of inky smoke. Not unnaturally
the Englishmen and Frenchmen on the ships would assume that the shells
speeding in their direction came from the visible smoke cloud and would
proceed to centre all their attention upon that spot. The space around
this burlesque gun was pock-marked with shell holes; the sergeant in
charge, I was told, had attracted more than 500 shots, while the real
artillery piece still remained intact and undetected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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