Pte Archie ‘Smiler’ Williams (Lilydale), 8^th Battalion: In camp at Ismailia, Egypt, on the Suez Canal. In a letter to a friend in Lilydale –‘The 7^th and 8^th went to Ismailia, on the Suez, when the Turks attacked, but the Turks were beaten before we got there and we only saw the end of the scrap. There’s not much doing here now and it’s a brute of a day – I’m sure its 130 degree’.

In another letter – ‘When the great scare of the Turkish invasion of Egypt came at the beginning of February, our (the 8^th) and the 7^th Battalions were sent to Ismailia on the Suez Canal but we got there at the tag end of the scrap and though we occupied the trenches for a while, we did not have any fighting. We spent a week at Ismailia and then came back to Mena’.