World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula; World War, 1914-1918 -- New Zealand
4. Rifles found on No Man's Land were to be collected, and immediately
placed on stretchers. No man was to carry a rifle in his hand. Each
side was to carry off its own rifles found in its burying area. Enemy
rifles were to have the bolts removed, and were to be then carried on
stretchers, and handed over to the original owners.
The morning of "Armistice Day" broke with a steady drizzle. At the
appointed hour fifty Turks, with Red Crescents on their arms, and fifty
Australians and New Zealanders with Red Cross armlets, met on the
extreme right. Each party had a staff officer and a medical officer.
The men carried short stakes with little white strips of calico on the
top, and, headed by the staff officers, who each walked near his own
front-line trench, the party went right down the centre of No Man's
Land, sticking in their little white flags.
By about 10 o'clock the demarcation was complete. As the party had
moved down No Man's Land, heads appeared over both parapets, and,
cautiously first, and then quite boldly, the soldiers on both sides
scrambled up on the parapets and experienced the uncanny sensation of
safety.
The burying parties struggled up the greasy clay tracks, marched out
with their shovels and their stretchers, and the day's work began in
earnest. And what a work! In some sectors the dead lay in heaps. In one
area of about an acre, three hundred bodies were tallied--mostly Turks.
"They are lying just as thick as sheep in a yard," said a Hawke's Bay
boy in the demarcation party. It was soon realized that proper burials
were out of the question, and that it was impossible to carry the
enemy's dead to the centre line. A mutual agreement was made to cover
up friend and foe, the Turk on his side and we on ours. So the Anzac
dead in the Turkish area were not identified by us; these are the men
who eventually were described as "Missing, believed killed" by the
Court of Enquiry.
[Illustration: ARMISTICE DAY, MAY 24, 1915.
These two pictures were taken by Brig.-General Ryan, of the Australian
Medical Corps. The top one shows the Turkish Staff Officer who brought
in the flag of truce. While going through our lines he was blindfolded,
according to custom, and escorted by a British Staff Officer.]
[Illustration: The bottom picture shows the burying parties at work in
No Man's Land.]
Away in the tangled gullies on our left flank, several wounded Turks
were discovered in desperate straits. These men were evidently snipers
who had been hit while crawling round in the prickly scrub past
Walker's Ridge. One man was picked up, and as he made gestures asking
for water, an N.Z.M.C. orderly lifted his head up and discovered that
his bottom jaw was almost shot away. Another wounded Turk was carried
in a distance of two miles, and most inconsiderately died as the
hospital was reached.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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