Good folk at home, and even of the out-back country, receive mails pretty regularly. We get ours once a fortnight, or once a month, or at even longer intervals. I do not join in the general chorus of condemnation of our postal service, for since the time I enlisted nearly twelve months ago all my letters and parcels have come duly to hand, while, so far as I know, none of my letters to Australia have gone astray. When we came to Gallipoli we naturally expected some break in the continuity of the service—and we got it. One reason is that, while the New Zealanders provided an up-to-date, well-equipped postal service, the Australians had only a skeleton postal corps—shockingly undermanned. Hence the congestion at Alexandria and Lemnos and the belated arrival of letters at Anzac.
There is nothing that cheers the soldiers up so much as letters from home. You see their eyes light up with pleasure as the postal orderlies toil up the hill with the mail bags. The postal corporal is the most popular man in the army. But he always seems so slow with his sorting. Those of us not in the trenches crowd round him and pounce eagerly on our precious missives. I have seen a great, hulking, swearing, unshaven trooper grab his letter, sneak into his dug-out, and kiss reverently some love-letter from a sweetheart back in sunny New South Wales; or perhaps it was from his mother or sister away in the great West land. And I've seen anxious troopers, with yearning eyes, hang round till the last letter and postcard were sorted—then wander away silently, and gaze dry-eyed over the blue Mediterranean.
Some of our fellows are married men, and some of these married men used jokingly to say that they had enlisted to get away from ... never mind; but I know that there was not one of them but spent half his time thinking of the old and the middle-aged and the young folks at home—not one of them but would have given the world to be able to take a peep at the wife who scanned the casualty lists so eagerly as they appeared in the papers, and the kiddies who strutted round proudly, saying, "Daddy's gone to the war."
It's cruel to be forgotten by the home folk when fighting the battles of one's country; but most of our chaps are loyal, and they always blamed the post office. One time our 6th L.H. Regiment mail had not arrived, and I stood by miserably watching other lucky devils getting their letters. Suddenly my eye caught the address on a newspaper, "To any lonely soldier in the Australian army." I immediately grabbed it. There was a protest from the postal official, who said the paper was not addressed to me, and that unclaimed papers are considered as "baksheesh" for the postal corporal. I pointed out that it was not unclaimed, since I had claimed it; and that as I at that moment was a lonely soldier it was clearly addressed to me. There was a fine row, but I won my case—and the paper.
Always at the end of the sorting there are many, many letters unclaimed. And the Regimental Sergeant-Major goes through the list, and with heavy red pencil writes "killed," "wounded," or "missing" on the envelope. What a tragedy lies hidden in these little heaps of letters to dead soldiers who can never read them!
It was no small loss, that barge with 250 mail bags from Australia. When I saw the barge sink I repeated the prayer of the popular English preacher, who exclaimed, "God damn the Sultan!" Why should that love-laden barge be the mark for the Turkish gunners? And why, after the hundreds of boats they have missed, should they get a bull's-eye there? It is sad to think of the thousands of soldiers who will never know the loving thoughts penned in those precious missives. Many will wonder why friends and relations have never written. And folks at home will be wondering why they got no answer.
For a time we simply could not write home. There was an envelope famine on Gallipoli. Not a single envelope could be had for love or money. We readdressed our old envelopes, or turned them inside out. We made post cards out of cardboard and cigarette boxes. Some of us even wrote home on the biscuits, which were warranted not to break. We waylaid sailors on the beach and offered fabulous prices for paper and envelopes. We wrote to our friends in Ma'adi and to the stores in Alexandria. But it's a long, long way to Egypt, and it seemed a long, long time before the envelope famine was relieved. That's one reason why some of our chaps never wrote home. Another reason was that we were all so tired after our turn in the trenches and the eternal "dig on, dig ever." As for stamps, everybody in Australia knows the legend on the soldier's envelope: "No stamps available."
Some of the letters home were delightfully ingenuous. Nearly all were brimful of cheerfulness. Now and then there was a growl; but we knew it wouldn't help the home folk if we complained, so I might paraphrase the Psalmist and say that all our men were liars—cheerful liars. I told you of the trooper who wrote home, "Dear aunt, this war is a fair cow." But that was exceptional. Most of the soldiers told cheerful lies about the good time they were having, the romance of war, the excitement of battle, and the exhilaration of victory. They told of the tricks they played on the Turks, the dummies they held above the parapets for Abdul to snipe at, the "stunts" for drawing the fire from the enemy's trenches, the risky excitement of bomb duels, the joy of swimming while "Beachy Bill" was showering shrapnel over them, and the extortionate rates charged by the sailor on the beach for condensed milk and chocolates.
But a real "grouse"—never. Well, hardly ever. And when there was one, depend upon it there was some good reason for it. I remember one. It was when a man in Australia wrote to a friend at Anzac: "We're having a rather bad drought in this district; you're well out of it." The man at Anzac fairly lost his temper. He wrote back: "Come over here." And after painting a picture of a battle or two—a real growl, if ever there was one—he concluded: "It's nearly as bad as your drought, and you're 'well out of it'."
Later, I was told, these two men met on the bloodstained fields of Gallipoli.