LETTERS FROM CALLIPOLI

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 30 September 1915, Page 3

LETTERS FROM CALLIPOLI

THE following are extracts from a letter written to his parents by one of-our boys at the front: —

Well, I suppose you are always on the look-out for letters from me, but no more than I for yours. You are wanting to know quite a lot of things concerning xis here, but I am afraid I cannot satisfy your curiousity very much. Ido not like putting my thoughts, etc., on paper. Some of the sights have been too ghastly: I should like to forget them forever. Some of the accounts we have seen in the papers (especially N.Z. ones) sup posed to be official news makes us laugh a little; on the other hand, accounts by private individuals and letters which we sometimes see in the papers, well the silly vein in which they are written makes one who knows feel pretty wild. An Australian was telling me that he read an account in a paper which said : " The Australians were very useful in carrying water and ammunition to the New Zealanders in the firing line." Certainly the New Zealanders who did land on the first day were not wanting in pluck and had a hard time of it, and helped to save the situation by arriving in time to back up the Australians, to whom most of the credit of landing here at Haba Tebe (now called by our forces Anzac) is due. ' The Australians will always get their due from any New Zealanders who landed here the first day. Their stretcher-bearers were especially commendable. I had the honour, if it may be so called, of being in the first boatload of New Zealanders (composed of Auckland Battalion) to land here. We landed at about 8.30 a.m. on the morning of April 25th, and have been constantly under fire since that date —both here and at Cape Helles, so know a little of things that have happened. Anzac means Australian-New Zealand Army Corp. We are expecting a big attack by the Turks any time now. It is supposed to be theiA last big effort to drive us- into the sea. Needless to say, they have not the ghost of a chance now —we are too firmly established, and are looking forward rather eagerly for it to come off. And h ope to goodness it is their last dying flutter. —G. Nicholls-