Australia and the Gallipoli Campaign
July 1915
1 July 1915
The Victorian Department of Education’s magazine — The School Gazette — in a short article entitled ‘The School and The War’ told children in Grades III and IV that: The world rings with the praise of our gallant Australian boys at the front. Grades VII and VIII were urged to help wounded soldiers by collecting old sheets, pillow cases, towels, table-cloths, white shirts, white cotton frocks, white blouses. These could be used as bandages in the Australian hospitals in Egypt.
3 July 1915
A medical report from the 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station at Anzac Cove noted:
Dysentery is becoming very acute, and cases of extreme collapse are occurring.
8 July 1915
The 10th Battalion (South Australia) left Anzac for a three-day rest period on Imbros island. Captain Nott, the battalion medical officer, wrote:
A perfect holiday picnic.
13 July 1915
Between 13 and 17 July there was a daily artillery duel between the Australian 8th Battery (Western Australia), 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, and Turkish guns. On 17 July the No 1 gun was hit, killing Driver D Barrett-Lennard, of Guildford, Western Australia and Gunner S Carter, of Fremantle, Western Australia.
23 July 1915
From a hospital in Malta, Private Roy Denning, 1st Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers, wounded on Gallipoli on 16 June, wrote to his mother in Yass, New South Wales, the following words about the landing of 25 April in which he had taken part:
I knew what the ordeal of the strenuous day before [25 April] had been, and knew what pluck and determination was necessary to keep awake and alert through the long weary hours of the night, therefore I thought I was justified in being proud of being an Australian …
29 July 1915
No 3 Australian General Hospital arrived on Lemnos. The hospital equipment, however, was put on another ship and came three weeks later.
30 July 1915
Colonel Neville Howse, Assistant Director Medical Services, reported on the condition of the men of the 1st Australian Division six days before they were to take part in the major August Offensive at Anzac. Howse wrote that the constant strain, the small quantity of water, and the climatic conditions, together with a type of diarrhoea that was producing anaemia, had undermined the men's health. Thirty percent of them were unfit and the rest were not fresh and were unlikely to be able to withstand prolonged strain.