Trp Bert Hutchinson (Lilydale), 4^th Light Horse Regiment: In camp in Tripoli. In a letter to his future wife, Jessie Mackenzie of Yalca, Vic –‘We are having a very quiet time and the last week was rather wet but the winter is just about over. We will arrive home in time for another winter with luck but the weather will not affect us very much. A few of the boys will be leaving here tomorrow but I do not know when the regiment is leaving this fair country. It’s time we made a start. I would sooner lose a limb than suffer from Shell Shock. It is an awful complaint and may affect a man for years but better still I hope to reach Aussy as well as I left. It is hard to say whether your cousin was fortunate or otherwise. His mother would be pleased but I would have been very disappointed if I had been stopped on the journey. We are all anxious to get back’.

The following local soldiers arrive back in Australia from Europe on the HT Mamari:

Spr Robert Fairnie (Lilydale), Australian Army Pay Corps

Pte Thomas Butcher (Yering), 5^th Battalion: He is to discharged as medically unfit as a result of wounds he’d received the year before.