Item 01: Eric Susman war diary, 1 January 1915-4 April 1916 - Page 69
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[Page 69]
Sunday 14 February 1915
The inevitable and boring Church Parade to-day during which the religious Australians select a human target in one of the front platoons, and vie with each other in piling up the largest number of "hits", made by throwing the innumerable small peebles in the sand as accurately and rapidly as possible. As in acting service firing, the combination of accuracy of aim and rapidity of fire wins the day, so, even on the Sabbath we learn a little more about soldiering, the weak-voiced, uninteresting chaplain being treated as a negligible quantity.
This afternoon a pal of mine, a real good old pal of the Sydney days, came over to Heliopolis to pay me a visit. And how good it was to have a talk about old times (for now it seems a long, long time since we left our old Sydney life for that of a soldier's life). It is only when you are in a foreign country, without any vital interests for you, that you recognise the true worth of a friend, a man whose interests are your own and yours are his. Now I know the meaning of the word Friendship.