Dvr Richard Pendlebury (Seville), 2nd Field Artillery Brigade: On Anzac Cove. Letter written to his brother George from Gallipoli – ‘Some of us went round one of the gullies the other evening to see some mates. We were sitting in a dugout talking to them. Three of the boys had legs sticking out, and a sniper wounded them all through the legs with one bullet. A Red Cross man was fixing them up, and the sniper got him too. I am darned if we could see where the bullet came from. Four men with two shots is not bad going.
The Turks stopped and mined one of our trenches. It was a (race) but they beat us by ahead. When it exploded they got in. Our boys chased them out again, and captured their trenches also. The Turks lost a lot of men, and I guess they will want another armistice soon. They say the Turks are treating their prisoners well. Some of my mates have been missing since the first Sunday we landed.
The Turks are putting all sorts of rubbish in their shells. One chap got wounded with a safety razor blade the other day. They will be shoving Turkish Delight in them next. The lowest estimate of the Turkish losses on the Peninsula is between 55,000 and 60,000, and that was before the charge the other night. There will be a lot more now.
There are some narrow escapes here. An empty shell case landed in a chap’s dugout and knocked his hat off. The shrapnel comes down like rain, but two-thirds of it landed in the sea. The boys often get hit with spent bullets from it, but it only stings for a time. I am feeling great: this is a good country only the people are not civilized. I must knock off now, as I have just got orders to take some hand grenades to the trenches. There is going to be some dirty work tonight’.
Pte Ralph Goode (Lilydale), 2nd Field Ambulance: On Anzac Cove. In his diary –‘One good thing is that we have got rid of the snipers, the amount of damage they did was enormous. With their faces and rifles painted green and with their bodies covered with bushes, it was impossible to find them, being so well hidden in the scrub. Some were dug in the ground with just their rifle and head out, others were in natural cover, it was only by diligent searching by parties specially told off for this work that we have got rid of them. You must know that they were in our lines, when the Turks retreated, these snipers who were told off, stopped behind and so got us between two fires. They made a speciality of officers and non-coms, we had to take our Red Cross brassard off our arms as they made too good a target’.