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[Page 65]
A COMIC OPERA CAMPAIGN
The News columns of the papers during the past four years have been so busy recording the operations on the principal fronts that it is little wonder that the seige of Aden is practically unknown, so far as the public are concerned. Mesopotamia, East Africa, New Guinea and Samoa all had their cable news from time to time, but what was happening around Aden (strategically one of our most important links of Empire) nobody seemed to know or care. When the Australian T.B.D. flotilla arrived at Aden early in August 1917 en route for the Meditteranean no one was more surprised than themselves to learn that Aden was a beseiged town, and that the Turks had a playful habit of bringing a 12 pdr. down to the water's edge after dark and take pot shots at the shipping at anchor within the inner harbour.
Most people travelling home from the East know, "old Aden like a Barrack stove that aint bin lit for years and years." No doubt hey have been out to the Gymkana, or picnicked out by those historical tanks, relics of a mighty engineer of centuries past, but few, I imagine, have taken the dry and dusty road that leads to the Salt Mills along the narrow neck of land which joins Aden to the mainland.
In the early days of the War these Salt Mills were seized and occupied by a considerable mixed force of Turks, Arabs, and Somalis, and Aden very seriously menaced. No reinforcements were at hand nearer than Bombay - five days steam - and had it not been for the prompt action of the G.O.C. Aden in taking a very firm hand with the natives in Aden itself, while repelling the advance of the Turks with what white and Indian troops he had available, it is quite conceivable that Aden might have been become an enemy