Item 01: Oliver Hogue letters, November 1914-29 December 1915 - Page 138

[Page 138]           

Gallipoli 11.8.15

My dear Everybody:-
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Our mails were not all  sunk by the dirty Turks Tho is quite true that a lucky shell [smashed?] a barge and   sent 250 bags of loveletters & other waste paper into the bed of the Aegean Sea. But by night when Beachy Bill was asleep, several hundred more bags arrived and now we are revelling in kindnesses. Just imagine what a precious freight that was. The barge was laden with love from home, heavy with kind thoughts [indecipherable]  messages longings & hopes & fears. No wonder it [indecipherable]  made for the shore. No wonder the Turkish guns in the olive grove found it an easy 'mark'   I think of all the lads who  missed their love words from home I can quite echo the English poet   who exclaimed in wrath "God damn the Sultan".

Yet another piece of ill luck came from the same quarter (you must know that we have been slightly annoyed by a German battery hidden away in in  olive grove about 3 or 4 miles from here. When the Turkish observation station signals that a barge or pinnace is coming ashore a telephone message is [sent?] to  the olive grove & the battery sends a salvo. It did this when we landed 3 months ago. It does it whenever we are swimming in the Cove. It does it at all hours. Our guns can silence the olive grove but the German guns are so cunningly hidden under the hill that it is almost impossible to knock the guns out)   Will