Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 610
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[Page 610]
bound for Anzac in European Turkey. Notwithstanding the head wind we should soon be there
16.10.15. – 7-50 p.m. We arrived at Anzac beach about 1-30 p.m., and got to be[d] on a stretcher about 2-30 a.m. Rifles and big guns were being fired in all directions from the ships in the offing the latter and from the tops of the hills the former. A terrible clatter about 4 or 5 A.M. which woke me and kept me awake for some time. Jerrom slept on the ground alongside my stretcher The night was, or rather the morning was, cold.
Breakfast about 8.30 a.m., porridge, chops, bread, butter, tea, did me first class. The saw Colonel Howse. [indecipherable] He told me to put up for a few days at No 1 Australian Casualty Hospital. Today I have been a guest with Col Major Gordon, a medical man who comes from Melbourne I believe.
The clatter above referred to I was told was a demonstration by the ships and other guns against the Turkish position. It went on for hours. The enemy took no notice. The hospitals had been warned to be ready for casualties. The result was one man wounded. How many on the Turkish side no one knows. Considering that the Turk took no notice it is to be supposed that he suffered but little. Such a show must cost a lot of money.
No one can imagine what the hills here are like. They rise almost at once from the beach. The land is a composition of reddish sand mixed with stones, no loose as is
the sand on a sand hill round Sydney but more closely held together. It is for the most part covered with shrubs which are but a few feet high, in appearance they suggest broom, holly, the waratah plant (whereon the flowers bloom around Sydney)
[Lieutenant Colonel, later Major General, Sir Neville Reginald Howse, 1863-1930, surgeon and army medical officer, embarked from Melbourne on 22 October 1914 on HMAT A3 Orvieto with Headquarters, 1 Australian Division. He was in charge of the evacuation of the wounded from Gallipoli and was later given command of medical services, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, as deputy director. From November 1915 he was director of medical services of the AIF.
Major, John Gordon, surgeon, embarked from Melbourne on 5 December 1914 on HMAT A55 Kyarra with the 1st Australian Clearing Hospital.]