Ellis Silas letter and notes relating to the Anzac Buffet in London, 19 December 1921 - Page 2

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[Page 2]

Who shall say to what excellent [indecipherable] this Anzac Buffet was organised? Only those of us (and our numbers are many) could quite realise how much this little spot meant. Thousands of miles of heaving ocean separating us from the Homeland. It seems aeons since we left the sunny coasts of Australia. There has been hard training in Egypt followed by the stress, privations and brutality of the battlefield, and now we find ourselves dumped into the murk and gloom of war ridden London. But the doors of the Buffet open and so after a long period we are enabled to once more get in touch with matters Australian. The Anzac Buffet is situated within a stones throw of the Terminus Victoria, which hourly is sending off trainloads of troops to the battlefields, and with equal rapidity vomits forth its sick and wounded, and not quite so frequently leave trains arrive, with war worn men seeking a brief respite from the horrors and fatiguesl of the Front line.

The Tommies they have relatives to meet them they know where to go but we are not of these, for our home is thousands of miles distant and we wot not of the world's greatest metropolis but are marched off to H.Q. at Horseferry Rd, but this is anything but home, it is still the trying but necessary army regulations to which we are subjected. We leave our kit and pack in the cloakrooms- and with leave pass in hand, for the nonce are free men; but what to do? Where to go? We wander out thro a slum, into the dimness of

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