Pte Malcolm Rankin (Lilydale), 21^st Battalion: In a letter to his uncle in Lilydale –‘We are camped at Tel-el-Kebhir in Egypt, about 160 miles from Alexandria, right in the desert. You can see nothing but sand as far as the eye could reach. It is very hot and dusty and the flies were pretty bad but I am getting fat since I came over here. It is about 120 degrees in the shade, but lovely and cool at night. I saw Oswald Wilson and Bob Shell from Lilydale and Bert Hutchinson had just left there. We were only there three weeks and we were not sorry to leave there’.