Anzac Day: War letters to home

Caryn Wilkinson Reporter from Community News

Sunday marks the 106-year anniversary of the first landing of New Zealand and Australian soldiers at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

For many of the 16000 soldiers, April 25, 1915 marked their first day of combat.

And by that night, 2000 had been killed or maimed.

We remember our Auckland veterans with their letters to friends and loved ones back home.

Corporal Owen Tudor Brewer (pictured in uniform with his family) wrote to his sister Elsie Brewer:

Zeitoun, June 5, 1915

Dear Elsie,

I received your letter of the 17th April yesterday, though I suppose you expected me to receive it on the boat.

I last sent a letter at Aden. We only stopped there a few hours and then left for Suez.

The Red Sea seems to be studded with islands and numbers of light houses on the same (I do not mean on each island).

We passed in very close to one, where a small supply boat had just landed kerosene or what they burn and a long line of coolies like small dots with flashing heads were moving up a steep almost precipitous slope carrying a tin each on their head which glittered in the sun.

Soon after we ran into thousands of drowned locusts floating in the water and now and again one or two fluttered aboard.

For a day and a half we steamed through them and as we were then cutting out 275 miles per day, you can imagine there must have been a fair number of them.

They were a bright yellow colour and about three inches long.

Eventually we arrived at Suez where we disembarked and one lot went through to Cairo that day and I was left behind with a fatigue party to clean up the stables.

We soon finished that and I went for a short stroll round the wharf and yarned to a few Gurka troops who had been in France and were recuperating in a more suitable climate.

One of them claimed to have accounted for 7 Germans and was eager to hang a few more scalps to his belt.

They had some very exciting experiences to relate and I reluctantly bid them Kia Ora, as the troop train which was to convey the remainder of us to Cairo was due.

We soon left Suez behind us, it being late in the evening a cool breeze, or at any rate a cooler breeze than we had had throughout the day when not a breath of air was stirring fanned through the open carriage window.

We had several stops at which the natives beseeched us to buy “orange, mulberries, lemonade.”

I invested 1 piastre in a basket of mulberries and after passing it around the carriage discovered the simple minded native had shoved a couple of handfuls of grass in the bottom and a dozen or so berries on the top as bait.

The joke was on me.

We arrived in Cairo next morning and learning the train, marched down to camp, finding on arrival everything ready for us to drop into our places.

That day and the next we sweltered in the heat.

Cairo was gasping and the maximum temperature reached 119 in the shade.

I consumed great quantities of cool lemonade and became acclimatised.

The heat now does not affect us any more than a midsummer New Zealand day.

It is a very dry heat and we do not oil our rifles at all, only using black lead on any friction parts.

I have been down to Cairo and Heliopolis twice and tomorrow have arranged with a guide for a trip to the Pyramids which will provide some news.

Cairo has very beautiful buildings built of solid stone and masonry work.

Some of them are surrounded by gardens which are a picture to look at and again by a high stone wall with a ponderous gate lot guarded by native porters and a few beggars whose children gather up the crusts we throw away when having lunch on route marches.

We have lots of fun with orange sellers and donkey hirers who charge exorbitant rates if you let them ring it out of you, but a touch up with the riding whip soon brings them around to a knowledge that they have not caught a bunch of mugs.

The troops here are all anxious to get to work and if we have any luck I expect to get away within 3 weeks time.

The flies are biting something unprintable so guess I will have to close.

I am going to have a look around at some postcards and will send them along under separate cover to ta ta, love to all at home,

Owen.