The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-02-26
TURKS FOOLED BY
 UNMANNED RIFLES Continued to Fire Long
 After British Left AN INGENIOUS BLUFF Evacuation of Suvla Was Carried Out With Numerous Strategems
 Which Proved Effective
 Against the Turks
AN INGENIOUS BLUFF
By PHILIP H. PAToHIN

London, February 9-The evacuation of
 Gallipoli peninsula by the British forces,
 with virtually no losses at all, will ever
 remain in the history of the world as 8
 military feat of great proportions, just
 as all the heroes of the Dardanelles fiasco
 will take their place with those of Ther-
 mopolae but how the thing was done,
 how the Turks were fooled, has not been
 told in detail. From wounded officer,
 just back from Suvla bay, where he was
 amongst the last to leave, have some
 of the facts of the gigantic bluff. At
 Suvla the British staff, in planning on
 the evacuation, counted on 20,00O casual
 ties during the disembarkation. Not a life was lost. And this, in part, is the way it was done:
 The decision to abandon the ill-fated
 Dardanelles expedition was reached some weeks before the actual departure of the
 British troops. It was kept dead se- cret and few officers at Suvla knew of 1t. TheA Turks, of course knew nothing at all, and the British staff was confronted with the problem of devising some way whereby the troops could move off dur ing single night without the enemy be- coming aware of the movement As the official dispatches have told, it was some hours after the actual departure of the troops that the Turks became finally aware that the trenches opposite them were empty, that the last living Britishers had departed. Without knowledge of the full facts it seems incredible that as good soldiers as the Turks could have had all this happen under their very noses without seeing that something was up. SHY OF SILENCE
 But the Turks had become accustomed to silent British trenches, and looked upon them with as much respect as when they teamed with life and rifle fire Days before the evacuation the word was passed through the British lines that not a shot should be fired. The order was carried out. The Turks could not make heads or tails of the situation. They threw few bombs-no reply They opened with rifle and machine guns and artillery-still no response. A venture some Turk peered over a parapet No sharpshooter picked him off Then oth- CTS came up, and finally whole band of them came out into the open and up to the barbed wire entanglements, looking toward the British lines. When their mum. | Der was considerable the British machine guns opened fire and bagged a good lot oi Turks. The thing was done several times and the Turks came to learn that silent British trench might be an exceedingly | dangerous thing to investigate.
 | Then the British staff kept the Turk:
 guessing as to the number of troops actually in the trenches. In the nigh men were taken from the trenche. down to the beach. and marched up, sS
 the Turks could see them, in the dawn It looked like re-enforcements all tn, while.
 Finally the night of departure came i, Under a plan that had been worked out to the very last detail, with every man given a specific duty, the thins
 was carried out with glowing success Trench after trench was evacuated. the men hastening under the cover of dark.
 ness to the shore, thence onto barges and off to waiting transports Supplies which could not be carried were pileo up on the beach. On them were emptiec
 casks of rum to make them burn. Al l the last moment these bonfires were started. In this way an enormous quantity of winter clothing, whict could not be carried away, was de- stroyed, along with tons of other ma terial.
 RIFLES STILL FIRED
 But most ingenious of all was the
 scheme adopted to make the Turks be- l lieve that the trenches were still in- habited, long after the actual depart
 ure. Some hundreds of rifles were laio along the parapets and lashed into fixed positions aiming, of course, to-
 ward the enemy. Undereath each oi l these rifles was hung a tin can, once | devoted to containing "bully beef" from Chicago. This can was suspended from
 trench supports and so on, but not at 1 tached to the rifle. Beneath this was
 another beef tin which, by means of . string was fastened, and hung from
 the trigger of the rifle. In the bottom
 of the first can had been punched anum.
 Der of small holes. Just as the troops
 were leaving the upper cans were filled with water. This trickled strough the holes in the bottom of the cans an6 dropped into the can beneath, which
 was connected by the string with tho ! rifle trigger. With the continued | trickling of water the can beneath be. came heavier and heavier, until finally | it's weight on the string was enough to pull the trigger and explode the rifle. Thus for considerable time after
 the last British soldier had departed rifles along the British parapets would explode, and 1t was only natural thai | the Turks should consider that Brit, ish soldiers still inhabited the trenches