Cpl Stanley Nicholas (Lilydale), 5^th Light Horse Regiment: Is evacuated from Anzac Cove to hospital in Malta suffering from dysentery. He had also broken he’d artificial teeth trying to eat the biscuits issued at Anzac Cove.

Pte Harry Black (Coldstream), 8^th Australian Machine Gun Battalion: On Anzac Cove. In a letter to his family at Coldstream –‘After many weeks of hard training in Egypt I am at last in the trenches amongst the sound of big guns and swish of shrapnel. I have been here now close on a month and am getting quite used to the scenes of warfare. It is wonderful how accustomed one becomes to the noise of big guns, the continual crack! crack! of the rifles and the bursting of shrapnel overhead. They are swishing and bursting in all directions now as I sit here writing this in my dugout.

What I am experiencing is not as pleasant as the times I have spent in the hunting field. I have not met any of the Lilydale boys here so far. I came across Cav Lawlor, Charlie Ryan and Bert Henry in Egypt, also Jim Fraser and Will Reid from Yering, the last two boys having just arrived in Egypt a few days before we left for the front.

Our trenches are only about 40 or 50 yards and in places within five or six of Abdul’s lines. ‘Abdul’ the name the Turks go under here. He is at present rocking in shrapnel but we always send him back a few headache wafers in return. The enemy always send shells after our aeroplanes as they soar overhead but never seem to get within ‘cooee’ of them. One can see the shells burst in the air, leaving little fleecy clouds of smoke hanging in their train.

The country round here is very hilly, the hills rising almost straight up, two and three hundred feet high. Anyone seeing the place where the Australians landed would think the task a matter of impossibility. Their landing must always rank as one of the greatest in history. Now we are almost out of the hills and will be getting into more level country. We can see the Turks’ shovels show up over the parapet as they are cleaning out their trenches and often have a shot at the shovel; if we miss they will wave a washout back but if we hit he will not mark a bull’s eye as he finds he has urgent business in another part of the trench’.