Hyder's letter to his mother, written 27-28 July 1915 / Laurie E. Hyder - Page 3

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the ships inside, a great sight was before us here battleships in galoore & transports we had to stand to attention while passing the warship, the bugles played the salute.
We also had the pleasure of seeing the wonderful dreadnaugh Queen Elizabeth, which I will explain about later on. The French battleships are such curious looking creatures with all their guns covered over with some brown stuff, makes them look rusty, but their not. The next day we were all served out with 200 rounds of bullets like the ones I had in my room & every day we had to go up & down rope ladders over the side of the ship with full marching order on. The third brigade had been here a month doing this. They were too be the first to land on Gallipoli so had to be very well trained in this sort of work, I am in the second as you know.
One day we were practising this & were told to be very careful & not to fall in by our officers,Mr Lieutenant Riddle is our platoon commander, so we had all our shoulder strap & waistbelt undone so as we could slip them off in case we fell into the water, well we got into the boats alright & then pulled ashore, while getting ashore Mr Riddle fell in & we had a laugh, there is a Greek village here, very pretty little town & such a lovely church, lovely inside, well we came back to our ship again & going up the roap ladder two chaps fell in, they lost their rifles & got a good ducking. The next day I was on guard. Some sailors came alongside & put on a diving jacket & went under the ship to look at a pipe