World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula; World War, 1914-1918 -- New Zealand
During July the shelling seemed to increase in intensity. Perhaps it
was that the Turk had more information about our dispositions and
shifted his guns a little further round on the flanks to enfilade
the beach. Dugouts that had previously been considered safe now had
shrapnel coming in the front doors, which is disconcerting, to say
the least of it. But the New Zealander, ever adaptable, drove his
little dugout into the hillside at a safer angle and cheered the little
trawlers as they slipped their anchors and zigzagged out of range.
Early in the morning two big shells came over in pairs and dropped
out to sea among the shipping. Rumour had it that they came from the
"Goeben," anchored in the Straits. They certainly caused magnificent
twin geysers as they plopped into the Ægean, but never once did any
damage materialize. Because of their early morning regularity these
guns were christened "Christians Awake." The shells really came from
an old battleship, the "Hairredin Barbarossa," anchored in the Narrows
between Maidos and Chanak. She had three pairs of 11in. guns, with
which she carried out her early morning bombardments. Built by the
Germans, she was sold to the Turks in 1910, and finally was submarined
by a British submarine on August 8, the day the New Zealand Infantry
Brigade dashed up to the crest of Chunuk Bair. The most deadly gun was
one (or a battery of them) fired from the Olive Groves away inland from
Gaba Tepe. As this gun enfiladed the beach, it became widely known as
"Beachy Bill." He it was who interfered mostly with the landing of
stores, and worse still, the bathing. A long range gun firing from the
other flank and emplaced in the "W" Hills, was known as "Anafarta
Annie." Not many of our guns had names, but the mounted regiments on
Walker's Ridge appropriately dubbed an Indian mountain gun "Rumbling
Rufus."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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