Australia and the Gallipoli Campaign
June 1915
2 June 1915
Major-General Alexander Godley, commander of the Australian and New Zealand Division, addressed the Australian 4th Brigade — 13th (New South Wales), 14th (Victoria), 15th (Queensland, Tasmania) and 16th (Western Australia, South Australia) Battalions — in Reserve Gully. The brigade had been in action since the landing of 25 April and Godley said to them:
I have come here today to tell you with what great pride and satisfaction I have watched your performances during the last five weeks … Yours is a fine record and one which you yourselves and Australia should be proud of.
Sergeant Cyril Lawrence, 2nd Field Company Engineers, arrived on Gallipoli as a reinforcement for his unit. For the remainder of his time on Gallipoli he kept a diary. This was his first impression of the Anzac Cove area:
But above all the thing that meets, or rather hits, the eye is the number of ‘dugouts’ … The whole landscape is covered with them. It looks for all the world like a mining camp.
3 June 1915
Sergeant Lawrence's diary:
Rose about 6.45 am and had a shave and a wash. The latter is accomplished by damping one end of the towel in water and that serves for the day.
6 June 1915
Sergeant Lawrence's diary:
We had a glorious swim after dusk. The Turk guns seldom fire after dark … the beach is just crowded — all men though. I came home and wrote to the family and then to bed.
7 June 1915
First Australian Hospital Ship, the Kyarra, left Suez, Egypt, carrying wounded back to Australia.
8 June 1915
Sergeant Lawrence's diary:
Each man has to cook his own rations, get his own firewood and everything … Our rations are as follows: breakfast — tea and sugar, no milk, six biscuits per day (hard as Hell too), a small piece of cheese, a quarter pound jam and one rasher of bacon. Lunch — tea only. Tea — stew or bully beef and tea, no milk.
9 June 1915
1st Australian Field Bakery, which had been working at Lemnos, moved to the island of Imbros, approximately 24 kilometres from Gallipoli. The bakery sent 14500 bread rations daily on a trawler to the troops on Anzac until the end of July when it was joined by British bakery units.
13 June 1915
First issue of fresh bread on Anzac from the 1st Australian Field Bakery on Imbros. A 10th Battalion (South Australia) commentator remarked that despite the fact that the bread got a bit wet from being on the open deck on its way from Imbros, it was a good deal better than the standard issue hard army biscuit known as the ‘Anzac Wafer’.
19 June 1915
A pier was completed at Anzac Cove for landing stores and equipment. It was built by the 2nd Australian Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers, and called Watson’s Pier after Major S H Watson, 1st Division Signal Company, who supervised the construction.
23 June 1915
Orders were given for the construction of extensive new terraces on the hillsides above North Beach at Braund's Hill to accommodate reinforcements for the proposed August offensive. In general the troops hated this so-called ‘fatigue’ work.
Eight bathers at Anzac Cove were hit by Turkish shell-fire. One man came out of the water with an arm almost severed.
28 June 1915
Six Australians of the 9th Battalion (Queensland) were made prisoners-of-war by the Turks after a failed diversionary attack in the southern sector of Anzac from Holly Ridge. Three of these men survived captivity.
30 June 1915
Sergeant Lawrence's diary:
I feel pretty sick and weak today — have had dysentery and neuralgia since I landed here.