Item 01: Oliver Hogue letters, November 1914-29 December 1915 - Page 139
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[Page 139]
2
as I was saying if we get another bit of bad luck from here. A Turkish shell landed on the beach and smashed a couple of casks of rum. Now we dont mind them smashing biscuit tins or even playing havoc with our bully beef but we do draw the line at the abolition of the rum ration. Do you remember the Rum Purchase Revolution in Sydney in the early hurly burly days? Well we nearly ended the war straight away So exasperated were our fellows that they nearly sallied out on their own & grabbed the Turkish trenches & put the garrison to the sword.
As a matter of fact (liar) when the big scrap began a few days after a lot of our chaps really thought that the destroying of our mail & the spilling of the rum made the Casus belli. Here we have dubbed the scrap aforesaid 'the Battle of Rum-Mail'. In the dim & distant future Australians will see the name, read of the battle & search amongst the archives for the reason. So you will deal kindly and carefully with this precious manuscript.
Have I not often told [indecipherable],of the wonderful cheerfulness of the boys when wounded? Well heres another true bill. A chap was badly wounded at the Bloody Angle & when being carried down to the beach was very faint. So at the Army Service Depot the stretcher bearers helped & gave him a tot of rum & a cigarette. "Aint I