07/06/2022
In a cable of 7th June 1915, Malcolm Ross, the New Zealand official correspondent, told how 300 sick and wounded men were returning home on the 'Willochra'; that some of war's realities that didn't appear in newspapers would be told by them.
Ross also described meeting Charles 'Plevna' Ryan at Shepheard's Hotel, in Cairo, discussing his experience of the truce at Anzac on 24th May 1915.
“The intensity of this war will have been brought home to the people of New Zealand with startling suddenness and with a shock that even the most imaginative could scarcely have been prepared for. The grim realities of the battlefield itself are mercifully withheld from our own land, yet in a few weeks' time the Dominion will be hearing something of them at first-hand. The Willochra, now lying peacefully in a Suez dock, is being turned into a hospital, and in a few days will set sail for New Zealand with 300 sick and wounded on board. As has been the case at the New Zealand Hospital at Abassia, everything possible will be done for their case and comfort, and sad as it will be for most of them to leave their comrades and to think that their fighting days are over, it will be a tremendous relief to them to get out of the sweltering heat of Cairo and to turn their faces toward friends and a temperate clime. Major Holmes, N.Z.A.M.C., has been specially detailed to see to the fitting out and despatch of the ship.
“Meantime, the more than decimated force that remains is clinging with all the old heroism to its little bit of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and there it will continue to hold and to gain unless the odds should be of an overwhelming nature. Indeed not only has it held its own ground in the face of superior numbers, but it has sent a force south to help the Allies while its own attenuated lines have held against the enemy in superior force on the heights of Gaba Tepe. In this southern expedition, the losses of the New Zealanders, as has already been indicated, were again heavy, but once more they fought with magnificent dash and courage. The Allied forces drove the enemy into the village of Krithia, but failed to take the fort beyond that was their main objective. In this locality it now becomes a question of trench warfare with sapping and mining and artillery duels.
“Colonel Ryan, of the Australian A.M.C., was through the siege of Plevna with the Turks, and his book about that campaign is well known. Now he finds himself in the Gallipoli Peninsula in the opposing lines. I happened to have a letter of introduction to him, and the other day in Shepheard's [Hotel, Cairo], seeing a short, stoutish, grey-bearded man with Australian badges and a Red Cross on his arm, I asked if by any chance he happened to know Colonel Ryan. “I am Colonel Ryan,” he replied with a merry twinkle in his Irish eyes. He had just come back from his “dug-out” at Gaba Tepe. When the armistice was granted to bury the Turkish dead facing our lines, he walked out into the Turkish trenches, and when the Turkish doctors, noticed his Plevna ribbon they greeted him warmly, but wanted to know what he was doing in the opposing lines. He told them. They were fine fellows, these young Turkish doctors, he said. One spoke English perfectly. Dr. Ryan told him he looked like an Englishman. “No,” he replied. “I am a pure Turk; but I was educated in Paris.” Colonel Ryan got on very well with those young Turks, but he had a row with two German doctors, who wanted to make out that the Australians and New Zealanders in burying the dead in advance of their own lines were really making fresh trenches. The Turkish Staff officer who came with the flag of truce was, he added, a charming man.
“Colonel Ryan was in a hospital ship quite close to the Triumph when she was torpedoed by the German submarine. He heard a dull noise, and thought it was a distant gun; but immediately afterwards he saw a column of smoke and water rising in the air not very high. The warship heeled over on her side a little and remained in that position for a few minutes. Then she slowly turned over until they could see the red-paint on her bottom, after which she sank. At Lemnos, on the way back, he saw two Russian men-of-war steaming for all they were worth and firing, so he,judged that there were other submarines about. Colonel Ryan, notwithstanding his years, is fit and energetic. He is off back to his dug-out. As l said good-bye to him he remarked that he had a presentiment that he would never come back from the beach at Gaba Tepe.” [1]
[1] 'Ashburton Guardian' (New Zealand), 27th July 1915.
Image: “Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey. c May 1915. Surgeon General Sir Charles S. Ryan standing outside the dugout of the Aide-de-Camp as denoted by the ADC sign above the doorway.” AWM P02648.019.
