09/02/2023
Gnr. Harold Wharton Holden, 2nd Field Artillery Brigade Ammunition Column, Australian Field Artillery, wrote to a friend in Tooleybuc, New South Wales, on 31st August 1915 from 1st Australian General Hospital, Heliopolis. He described his experiences in Egypt and Gallipoli, including how he was wounded whilst bathing.
“I suppose you will think me very remiss in not writing you before this, but the fact is since leaving, Australia I have been chopped and changed about and had so many different addresses that I hesitated before writing to you, as even the home letters have been reaching me six months after they were written, and it only takes letters eleven days to get here from England. [1] Well, to begin with, I left Australia on 26th February on the Runic, and after a pleasant, smooth trip of 36 days, calling en route at Albany, Colombo and Aden, at we arrived at Suez on 2nd April, and disembarked next day, and proceeded by train to Cairo, and then camped at Abbassia, near Cairo, for a few days before moving to the main camp at the Mena, which, however, we found practically deserted, as only the Light Horse and a few artillery and army service details were left. All us gunners, who left Melbourne as the 2nd and 3rd reinforcements of the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade, were transferred at Mena to the 1st Australian Divisional Ammunition Column, and we only stayed at Mena five days, for which I wasn't sorry, as it is a terrible place when the sandstorms are blowing. But I managed to get to the great Pyramid and Sphinx. I rode round them on a camel one evening. All the column left Mena, and went by train to Alexandria, and we camped at Mex, a few miles west of that town, for another five days, and then embarked, horses, waggons, and all, on the s.s. Minneapolis, a 13,000 ton Atlantic cattle boat, and left Alexandria on the 24th April, and, after two days' sail reached the Island of Lemnos, which you will no doubt have read about in the papers, as where our infantry trained for their historic landing on Gallipoli. We stayed here three days, then three hours run brought us to the mouth of the Dardanelles, where we anchored a couple of days, and had a good view of the Allied warships bombarding forts, &c., on Cape Helles, and a nice row they made, I might say. We saw the Lord Nelson, Queen, Queen Elizabeth, Prince of Wales, Implacable, Amethyst, Swiftsure, &c., beside crowds of destroyers and French and Russian war boats. After leaving Cape Helles we went four or five hours' run down the coast of Asia Minor, and anchored off an island called Tenedos, where we lay a week, and unloaded some of our ammunition, of which we had a large quantity aboard, on to a mine sweeper, which took it to the peninsula. We went a back to Lemnos from here, stopping at Cape Helles a day, and then went from Lemnos up the Gulf of Saros to Anzac, and unloaded some more ammunition there, where the boys landed less than three weeks before. We didn't land, though, as the peninsula is much too hilly for 6-horse waggons to go perambulating about, but went back to Lemnos instead, and after waiting another two or three days, sailed back to Alexandria and disembarked, after having done a month's cruising about, without once landing either man or horse anywhere, and losing about 30 horses meantime. We went into camp at Cleopatra, a residential suburb of Alexandria, and stayed there seven weeks, having an easy time, and I learnt to swim there amongst other things. However, the welcome order I came for all the gunners (about 125 of us) to prepare for the Dardanelles immediately, and on 14th July we once more left Alexandria, this time on the SS Itonus, and after a day at Lemnos boarded a sweeper, and landed on the peninsula at Anzac on 19th July, at about 3 a.m., with stray bullets whizzing over our heads and causing some to duck precipitately. We made ourselves comfortable in dug-outs, and at 8 p.m. began our work of carrying 18-pounder shells from the ammunition stack on the beach up to the guns on the hills, we having been transferred meanwhile to the 2nd F.A. Brigade Ammunition Column. We had to work pretty hard while we were at it, sometimes working all night on ammunition and man-handling guns, and during the day digging officers' dug-outs, gun-pits, &c. But then we had easy times, on one occasion not doing a tap for four days. We lived well, getting a liberal issue of food, and cooking it ourselves. Personally, I lived better on the peninsula than I ever did at Broadmeadows, in Egypt, or on any troopship, and active service tucker will do me. However, on 5th August, after swimming in the sea. I got a shrapnel bullet through my left thigh and was taken on a stretcher to the dressing station, and put on the hospital ship Gloucester Castle an hour or so later, and left Anzac next morning, arriving at Alexandria four or five days later. We were put on a white hospital train there, and brought to Cairo, and then I was put in a motor ambulance and taken, with a lot of other wounded and sick chaps, to the 1st Australian General Hospital at the Palace HoteI, Heliopolis, which is the largest hotel in the world, I was only one day there, and as I could walk a little was taken to an auxiliary depot at the Heliopolis Sporting Club, where I stayed four days, and then I came out here (Helouan), about 20 miles from Heliopolis, in a M.T. lorry. This is a sanatorium hotel, and is used as a convalescent hospital for Australian and New Zealand chaps, the Grand Hotel here being used by the Tommies. Helouan possesses natural sulphur baths, which cause it to be a sort of health resort to fashionable tourists during the “season,” and it is full of empty hotels and pensions. I have been here over a fortnight now and as my wounds are nearly healed up I expect I shall be leaving in a day or two, and go to the base details camps preparatory to another trip to Turkey. I forgot to say that Jack left Australia three weeks before I did, and he was put into the 5th Battery at Mena, and he went cruising round like I did, only on a different boat, and now he is with his battery's horses at Zahiriah camp, Alexandria and while at Cleopatra I went out and saw him, and he was fatter than ever, and pleased to see me again, so indeed I was to see him. I don't know whether my name has been published in the casualty lists, but I noticed George Mason's name in a Sydney paper when I was at Anzac. I don't think I've much else to say this time, so I will ask you to remember me to all the children, and also to Jack Milne and the Helliwells.
“I hope you are doing better this year than last. I see by the papers that there has been some useful rains in the district, so I trust you've had the benefit of them. I'll never forget the 1914 drought as long as I live. This is a great irrigation country, and each side of the Nile is green for a considerable distance, as is also the ground served by the numerous channels which cross the desert between Suez and Cairo.” [2]
[1] In the 1911 Census Holden was an 18 year-old warehouseman at a brass foundry, living with his parents, Thomas and Annie Holden, at 206 Park Road, Bearwood, Birmingham.
[2] 'Swan Hill Guardian and Lake Boga Advocate' (Victoria), 25th October 1915.
Image: “Two unidentified soldiers back on the shore after bathing at the beach north of Anzac Cove.” AWM C01559.
