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[Page 59]
Rates of exchange in Egypt
Sterling - Egyptian
£ 1.0.0 - 95½ piastres
10 - 471/2 "
2 9½ "
1 4½ "
6 2 "
3 - 1 "
Money in circulation in Egypt
Piastres (English value)
½ - 1¼
1 - 2½
2 - 5
5 - 1 0 ½
10 - 2 .1
20 - 4 2
50 - 10 5 - Notes
100 - 1. 0. 10 - "
[In margin] Approximate values
(please send all my private belongings to –
Mrs W. Bendrey
Uralla
N S Wales
Aust.)
[Transcriber's notes:
William Ewart Bendrey was born in Armidale, NSW, on 21 June 1892. His father came from the English village of Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, England and his mother probably from Leeds, Yorkshire. He enlisted in Tamworth on 9th May 1915 at the age of 23 years and 11 months with his mate Harry Williams; they were both telegraphists. They arrived in Sydney on 16th May, and on the 18th May passed their medical at Victoria Barracks and transferred to Liverpool Camp and joined the 6th Reinforcement, 2nd Battalion, Australia Infantry. From this date he began to keep a diary and rarely failed to make a daily entry.
After exactly one month's training he embarked on the "Karoola" for "destination unknown", actually Gallipoli. On the 18th July they disembarked at Suez for Cairo and two weeks route marching and rifle drill before embarking on 1st Aug on horse transport Z32 for Lemnos, the jumping off point for the landing on Gallipoli.
They went aboard the fast boat "Sarnis" for the trip to the landing point at Anzac Cove which they reached late on the night of the 5th Aug. Next day they went into action as part of a major attack on Lone Pine. The 2nd Battalion, together with the 1st, 3rd and 4th battalions, were part of the 1st Infantry Brigade AIF. The 2nd battalion was positioned at the southern flank. Bendrey wrote in his diary "On Friday 6th 800 of us went into action 170 returned fit for service on the 8th".
He survived the hazards and horrors of the next three weeks only to fall ill with gastro-enteritis (dysentery) and reported sick on 27th August and was taken to Lemnos and then Alexandria. The dysentery and later jaundice kept him out of action for the next seven months which he spent in hospitals near Cairo until he returned to army camp in November and joined his battalion at Tel el Kabir in January 1916.
On the 22nd March 1916 they sailed for Marseilles and joined the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. They landed at Marseilles on 29 March then travelled by train to St Omer and the village of Renescure in Flanders. He left for the front line on the 10th April and arrived in the trenches on 19th. On the 25th April while "drawing a bead" on a German sniper, the sniper fired a shot which struck the plate of Bendrey's loophole and as a result he suffered a wound to the head and the loss of his left eye.
He continued to write his diary every day although, not surprisingly, the quality of his usual small neat writing deteriorated following the loss of his eye. He was treated nearby and at a hospital in Boulogne before being repatriated to England. He was hospitalised at the 3rd London General Hospital before transferring to Harefield, a hospital for Australian and New Zealand troops near Uxbridge, Middlesex. He was declared unfit for active service on 31st May 1916 and ended his service in England at Westham and Monte Video camps near Weymouth, Somerset.
During leave he visited his father's and mother's families at Portishead, near Bristol; Wootton Basset near Swindon; Leeds in Yorkshire and Wimbledon, Middlesex. He sailed for Australia on "Marathon" on 8th Aug 1916 and arrived in Sydney, 24 September 1916 where he was discharged from the AIF 11th Dec 1916 as medically unfit. He married Dulcie Osborne Gibbes of Ashfield NSW in 1932. It is not known if they had any children. He died in Campsie NSW, aged 65, in 1957.]
[Transcribed by Peter Mayo for the State Library of New South Wales]