Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 212

[Page 212]

[received] the same treatment and were obliged to retire in turn. Thus for a long period Quinn's post was sometimes occupied and sometimes a no man's land with both sides waiting for a suitable opportunity to seize it and hold it. It was the skilled miners of the New Zealand Brigade who finally got possession of it for good and who have held it ever since. As it was impossible to live above ground they proceeded to dig underground a regular network of trenches tunnels and bombproofs all supported by beams to prevent the soft soil falling in and to provide sufficient overhead cover to stop bombs from coming in.The Turks mined and tried to blow in this new defence but the New Zealanders counter- mined and blew up the enemy instead. Then they dug innumerable tunnels towards the enemy with listening galleries to checkmate any such move in the future. Their snipers having acquired a definite mastery they forced the enemy further back and then erected a row of rabbit wire which stands up in front of this maze of trenches tunnels mineshafts and bombproofs and which stops the bombs from entering. Now Quinn's is impregnable and quite comfortable and is seperated from the advanced Turkish trench by twenty to thirty yards of neutral ground under which both sides are constancy mining. These underground trenches are very popular with the men for they are cool and shaded and the cover is excellent. It is an extraordinary sight that meets the eye if you look through the periscopes along any section of the line embraced by Pope's Quinnfs and Courteny's Posts. A maze of trenches and barbed wire confronts you only a few yards away and scattered over the neutral ground all the customary debris of war including many of the enemy's dead