This letter was sent to Berwick State School headmaster Henry McCann from one of his former teachers, Private Cox, in June 1915. It was published in the Berwick Shire News and Cranbourne and Pakenham Gazette.
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
After leaving Egypt on Saturday night, we were at the island of Lemnos after a smooth passage.
We left on Thursday morning and two hours later heard the sounds of battle for the first time. In the afternoon we had arrived at our destination.
We transferred to a torpedo boat destroyer and thence to a lighter (vessel), which landed us at the beach. There we had tea and as soon as it was dark we were on the march to the firing line. During the time we were marching, firing was going on all the time, and since then it has never stopped for more than a few seconds at most.
We slept in a “dug-out” and the next morning climbed up the hill to the trenches. That was a week ago, and I have been at it ever since, 48 hours in the trenches, 48 hours out. When out of the trenches we live in a “dug-out”, one of hundreds made in the hillside. Imagine an Australian gully denuded of all its gum trees and covered instead with various kinds of low scrubs, with many bare patches showing the sandy soil underneath, and you have a good idea of the place we are in.
I arrived 10 days after the commencement of battle, so did not see the worst of it. It is perhaps just as well, as the hillside is sprinkled with the graves of boys who’ll never see home again.
So far I have not received a scratch, although I’ve had one or two very narrow escapes. Occasionally a Turk gets into the gully during the night, conceals himself, and during the day takes pot shots at the men as they go down to the water-hole. Several men have been shot that way and two days ago I almost got one. The bullet dropped in front of me and threw up dirt in my face – but that is all in a day’s work here.
The Turks are entrenched about two hundred yards away – and mighty good shots most of them are too. The first time a man bobs his head above the trench, he is safe if he does it quickly. If he puts his head up a second time to see the effect of a shot, he is lucky if he is only wounded, as the Turks use explosive bullets, which nearly always kill.
As I write the firing is proceeding as merrily as ever – mostly rifle fire – with the rip-rip-rip of a machine gun every few minutes, and shells passing over our heads from the battleships or from the Turks’ artillery.
It is seldom a man gets hit in a dug-out and I have grown so accustomed to the firing that I don’t notice it. As for the noise, I awoke with a start at daybreak this morning because the firing had stopped for a few seconds. The silence was uncanny, I can tell you.
Private Cox.
