Explore "Five Months at Anzac" by Joseph Lievesley Beeston on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
About the middle of July I sent a corporal and two men over to Heliopolis with a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Barrett, asking for some Red Cross goods. I had already received issue vouchers for two lots, but these had been intercepted in transit, so the men were ordered to sit on the cases until they gave delivery to the Ambulance. Fifty cases came, filled with pyjamas, socks, shirts, soap and all sorts of things. The day they arrived was very, very hot, and our hospital was full of men whose uniform had not been off since they landed. No time was lost in getting into the pyjamas, and the contented look on the men's faces would have gratified the ladies who worked so hard for the Red Cross. Talk about peace and contentment -- they simply lolled about in the scrub smoking cigarettes, and I don't believe they would have changed places with a Federal Senator.
Those Red Cross goods saved one man's life at least. All the unopened cases were placed outside the tent. One afternoon a shell came over into a case of jam, went through it, and then into another containing socks. A man was lying under the shelter of this box, but the socks persuaded the shell to stay with them, and thus his life was saved. It was on this day that my nephew, Staff-Sergeant Nickson, was wounded. He had just left his dug-out to go to the dressing station on the beach when a shrapnel shell severely wounded him in the leg. The same shell killed Staff-Sergeant Gordon, a solicitor from Adelaide, and one of the finest characters I knew. He was shot through the spine and killed instantly. Two other men were wounded.