10 Pdr Mountain guns at Anzac

[stevebecker]

Mates,

This was posted on another site and wondered if you have any coments on it?

"Something else that appears missing in Turk records to further ones questioning is the evidence of Hotchkiss 10pdr mountain guns, which has been put up in recent posts.
This from Major AC Fergusson of the 21st Kohat Mountain Battery, written in 1916 and placed in journal 85 of The Gallipolian in 1997 by his family.

".... Yet one more yarn about our own shell being fired at us. In the very early days we were often told we were firing on our own troops. Sometimes these allegations were wrong but investigation proved bodies of our own 10pdr shell sometimes in places where our guns could have put them, but also in places where they could not possibly have put them. One day Campbell was walking along a trench when an Australian told him to hurry as the Turks were shelling it, and pointed to the body of a shell which had just fallen. Campbell went and looked at it and found a shell with marks to show that it had been made in Cossipore and filled at Rawul Pindi, and the scoop of the shell had shown that it had come from right outside our line. He phoned down to me and I went and satisfied myself that it could not possibly be ours. I then went and asked Corps to wire and ask if Helles had lost any Mtn guns. The answer came back 'no' so the matter remained a mystery, but the Australians were still suspicious that we were doing it.

Long afterwards the mystery was cleared up. The BGRA New Zealand had long before the war ordered a battery of new mountain guns for NZ. England sent our old 10pdrs and BGRA refused to accept delivery. After a lot of correspondence England told him to sell them and credit them with the proceeds. NZ sold them to Turkey and here they were being used against us...."

Can we confirm if Turkey did buy these 10 Pdr Mountain guns from NZ and were they used at Anzac in 1915?

Cheers

S.B