Hyder's letter to his mother, written 27-28 July 1915 / Laurie E. Hyder - Page 4

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that was blocked up, very interesting to watch them. Whilst at Lemnos an enemys aeroplane flew over the bay, I suppose they were out for a bit of a spy, they never dropped any bombs, there were about 40 battleships here of all sorts & 5 or 6 submarines & 5 hydroplanes I had the pleasure of seeing these go up one day to do a bit of scouting, well Mother I will push along a bit we were here till the 24th April at 6-30 that night we sailed out of Lemnos, amid cheering, & cheering & coo-e's of the battleships, the sailors were giving us cheering remarks & wishing us all good luck, they evidently knew what we had to face as they were there bombarding the forts in march.
Well out of Lemnos we went with our pouches full of bullets & our haversacks full of biscuits & bullybeef. We were all given a lecture before leaving & told by the head that we were fighting a treacherous foe & that we were new to this game they call war, but he was sure that we would make a name for ourselves, that Australia would be proud of. At 8 o'clock we arrived in some little shelter bay called Mudros which hid us from the lookouts of the Dardenells we were now only a few miles from the peninsula- just before it got dark you could see away over on the horizon a dozen warships