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[Roy Frederick Arnold was an educated person based on his writing. His army records shows he was a Hatter, 20 years old when he enlisted in August 1914 and lived in Bega NSW. He served throughout the war, was wounded in France in August 1916, awarded the Military Medal on 17 October 1918, ended the war as a Sergeant and arrived back in Sydney on 17 Feb 1919. The citation for the MM reads as follows: "This N.C.O. did very gallant and useful work during the advance and consolidation of the captured position on 19/5/18 at Morlancourt. On reaching the objective he at once pushed forward with a captured machine gun to enfilade a party of the enemy who were still giving trouble from pot-holes in the rear and thus causing them to retire".
This letter to his mother, replaces a diary for 1916 that was lost. It starts after the evacuation of Gallipoli when he is on Lemnos Island, covers the time in Egypt and then the transfer to France and activities in and behind the front lines, his wounding and finally at the end of 1916, his admission to hospital in England with trench foot. ]
Dear Mum
Having nothing else to do I am going to write up last years diary. It will be mostly from memory for all I have done is jot down a few notes so that I would know the date of any incident that occurred. There are so many blank days in my diary because some of the days were blanks as far as incident is concerned.
We started the year on Lemnos Island at a place called West Mudros on Mudros Bay. We were given the day off but it was raining and as I had sprained my ankle the day previously I stayed in my tent and we passed the day playing cards.
A couple of days later there was an inspection by the General I was ill so I had to fall out. The day after that, the fourth of the year