Hyder's letter to his mother, written 27-28 July 1915 / Laurie E. Hyder - Page 10

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sore straits we were in, then we had to retire still farther back, we entrenched on the next hill on that Sunday night & have held it ever since. It rained like the very devil & the Turks kept charging us all the time, but we had our machine guns up now & they played sweet music with the turks. Imagine our joy on Monday morning when some of our artillery came ashore, I gave a hand to haul it up to its position & also uncapped some of the shells. We came out of the trenches on Friday morning relieved by the Royal Naval Division.
We went down to our dugout, had a good feed & then went for a swim while swimming a chap sitting right next to me talking was shot dead. All this time we had hardly any food, & no clothes but what we stood up in. We were then allowed to go and get our packs, it was a dangerous job as the turks would be able to pot at us while we were getting them; anyhow I got mine. The next day we went into the trenches again & two days after we were told that our brigade was to go down to Cape Hellis right at the mouth of the Dardenelles to make an advance there. Why the Tommies could not do it I never found out, eventually the Australians were the right men for the job. Everybody was talking of the